A lot of newspapers are in trouble right now. Some of the biggest papers are filing bankruptcy. Others are cutting back and laying off. One of the Detroit papers is talking of publishing a paper only three days a week.
What happened?
I think of it as the USATodayification Factor. Papers are becoming more and more generic. With the exception of a few really good columnists (who are available to read online), most newspapers are a generic mish mash of AP wire articles, sports scores, television and movie listings, etc. You find the exact same things in almost every newspaper you pick up. There is the thin selection of local and state issues, blandly reported according to police reports and whatever the "reporter" of the day has been fed. The days of asking questions, hard questions, and actually reporting are long gone. Yes, Virginia, Edward R. Murrow is dead.
The idea of true investigative journalism is practically a joke. The newspapers are mostly owned by the people who are supposed to be investigated. Reporters are generally lazy and simply repeat what they are told. They don't bother to check sources or, god forbid, facts. Do newspapers even have fact checking departments anymore? Probably not. They are all trying to compete with the 24-Hour news cycle, which is madness. True reporting, investigation, and, dare I say it, writing are not meant to be done in two minutes for immediate mass consumption and gratification. We, ahem, have blogging for that kind of thing.
What newspapers are beginning to find out, albeit too late, is that empty calories aren't all that satisfying. We can get the exact same content beamed to our cell phones and laptops in concise, predigested bits and continue to move in our mindless, habit-filled, rabbit warren lives. We don't need to sit down for an hour or so and enjoy our paper while we eat our healthful breakfasts. And we don't. We cram "news" down our throats the way we cram Starbucks and pastries down our throats. If newspapers wanted to be successful they'd print the news on frappelatteccino cups.
Yes, huge national stories can be broken by newspapers. It happens a lot. But then every other publication just jumps on the bandwagon and repeats the same crap ad nauseum. Local and state newspapers need to revive true investigative journalism locally. Let the people read the hard hitting and truly researched and investigated dirt about local and regional stories. Some of those stories will get picked up nationally. Great. But in the meantime, people are going to start reading the local paper again because it will be filled with the stuff you can't get on Google. Yet.
