The press room at the newspaper where I formerly worked is now silent. Not only silent, but empty as the multi-unit Goss Community Press with a color deck was sold for scrap, netting $2,600, a small fraction of its original cost. A ‘for sale’ sign sprouted by the large building once housing the newspaper and its 60 or so employees.
Unlike in many small towns, the newspaper still exists; however, it now offers printed copies only two days a week, Wednesdays and Saturdays, printed and shipped in from another city 150 miles away. Other days it goes out digital-only to fewer than 7,000 subscribers, about 10,000 fewer than when I worked there publishing six days a week.
In 1996 as managing editor I led the launch of its first online edition. I still recall the exhilaration of those early years experiencing the effortless and efficient transmission of information. Initially a means for scholars to share information, it helped fuel the economic boom in the 1990s. Interesting and useful websites proliferated, although I find irony in the name of the platform that I use for my website, WordPress.
A year following the launch I wrote a column about the adventure. While I don’t think of myself as any kind of prophet or prognosticator, the headline for the column could be interpreted that way. We always enjoyed writing clever headlines with word plays. In this case it read, “We’re not yet the news media formerly known as Print.” (About five years earlier the pop musician Prince introduced a symbol as his new name and was called ‘the musician formerly known as Prince’.)
The column content itself was more hopeful, more optimistic that somehow the print news media would adapt to the digital age: “The Internet is challenging business-as-usual in almost every area. Banks, the post office, newspapers, television, travel agencies, retailers, libraries, education — just about everything is or will be feeling the impact. The big mystery is, no one really knows for sure how it will impact… but for now print still rules.”
As happened in the mid-15th Century with Gutenberg’s press, the internet today has caused great disruption, with unforeseeable and uncontrollable consequences. A review of European history shows how the printing press led to a flood of words on paper, giving greater voice to the masses opposing monarchies and laying the groundwork for democracy. Rulers attempted but failed to control printing with licensing and other oppression.
The mass media that dominated the 20th Century has been replaced by the media mass of the 21st Century. Flipping those words occurred when I was a temporary community college communications class instructor in 1996. We were struggling to understand the potential impact of the internet on communication. The idea of artificial intelligence was not even in the picture.
We struggle with the paradox of being more connected than ever before, and yet so disconnected. The dark web, propaganda, data insecurity, doom-scrolling, and other nefarious uses have soiled the hopes of those early years. I feel sadness in seeing a roomful of kids all looking down at their phones, seeming to ignore one another. Most households hold one or more large, flat-screen TVs streaming entertainment.
As a former newspaper editor, I lament the lack of professional editing and review of content. The debasement of facts and blurring of reality contribute to what could be the failure and ending of the Postmodern age. I remain hopeful that goodness will prevail. We must avoid ‘screen-watching’ our way toward fascist autocracy.
With the internet, I do believe that some form of control or regulation is needed. I don’t believe the industry is capable of self-regulation. Trust remains a key factor in all successful human relationships. F2F – face-to-face, in-person contact remains strong. Meetings and events remain abundant.
Personal relationships coupled with the power of digital information tools will continue to fuel progress, if we can scale back the abuse that mutates social media into anti-social media. It is said that a majority of interpersonal communication is non-verbal. Even video on a small screen fails to replace non-verbal cues between people together in one place.
Long ago, back in the 20th Century, similar concerns arose with previous forms of electronic communication. Many believed that radio would replace newspapers, that television would replace radio, that video tapes would replace television, that streaming would replace movies. They all were affected by change, but they adapted.
In his 1967 book, The Medium is the Message, Marshall McLuhan says the technical glitz of television was the primary appeal, and not the information content. In a similar vein, around the same time educational theorist Robert Maynard Hutchins said, “We can put television in its proper light by supposing that Gutenberg’s great invention had been directed at printing only comic books.”
I wonder what they would have said about the internet.
Sept. 19. 2024. Next: Old world mass media (Newspapers, magazines, broadcast)
