Letters to the Editor
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Hello ....
Pot ... Kettle ... Black ...
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Bling Bling
And this dumbing down thing is different from Salon's turn to Broadsheet style pop-culture "feminism," lashing anonymous trolls into a froth of "letters" to the "editor," publishing 2.5 year old photographs in the name of 'journalism,' an increased presence of crappy but controversial writers and other self-serving, cynical tricks to increase clicks exactly how?
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Newspapers Are Bad
I subscribe to 3 newspapers (NY Times, Wall St Journal, Financial Times) which I skim every day. While I am not in the "young people" group that you decry (I am 38), I find the vast majority of newspapers published complete rubbish. I don't consider the NY Times rubbish because it's articles are too long, or too detailed, or too serious, or too "newsy". I find it rubbish because -- apart from the arts and business coverage -- it's a waste of my time. (The WSJ and FT are great but have a narrow focus.) If I read front page articles about a presidential election or a judicial confirmation, for example, I am treated to the rehashed press releases of the Bush administration, the RNC and "for balance" prominent Democrats. Think Judith Miller's stenography in the lead-up to the Iraq war. People consider the Daily Show a good news source because it exposes the ridiculous PR machine that we are subjected to via TV news and -- yes -- newspapers.
I spend a lot of time trying to understand what is actually going on (magazines, websites, blogs). But I certainly don't think that people who avoid newspapers are shallow or news-phobic. I do not need a whole hand to count the number of newspapers published in this country that contribute to an informed citizenry. People who eschew newspapers have correctly identified that newspapers cater to partisan political junkies who only care about the political horserace -- and offer very little to everyone else.
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Frankly, newspapers suck
I lived in Atlanta for a long while. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution was written on a 6th grade level and not even a good 6th grade level, no, a mediocre 6th grade level. By contrast, I can (and do) read MSNBC, CNN, Salon, the BBC, the Observer, etc. on a daily basis. Why would I want to read a terribly written local paper when I could read something fairly well-written that I don't have to pay for? The only time I buy a newspaper is when I need packing material for moving.
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Please do not dumb down
As a 26 year old young man, I read the New York Times on a regular basis. I may miss an issue, and I don't read the paper entirely, but I do try to read any newspaper as much as possible.
I really wish that newspapers would just focus on the news. Twenty year olds are intelligent human beings with minds and brains.
If newspapers want to reach young readers, they should experiment with our hearts and minds and not treat us like we're stupid. They should tell us why we should be reading about Iraq, President Bush, the Supreme Court nominations and that Kobe, Britney and dental bling aren't significant. The newspapers have it right to publish their papers for young readers online. But the daily paper version of the news is still king. You can't underline, write, and actively read an online news webpage. Furthermore, nothing is quicker than grabbing a newspaper and taking it with you.
I think the bigger problem is that people in general just don't like to read, and read things that aren't "interesting." We are all trapped in a media bubble that is inundated with too much information. I'm concerned that people are not concerned about the world that is greater than themselves. I suppose ignorance truly is bliss.
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Online subscription to NYT
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Gannett is to newspapers what Applebees is to restaurants.
In Utica, New York, a city in decline with some 60,000 inhabitants, we have the Observer-Dispatch. It's what I call a McPaper, one of the 91 that is owned by Gannett. A USA Today clone. It reads exactly like any of the other 91 Gannett newspapers, and I bet if I were to pick up another of the 91 Gannett newspapers, it would look exactly like the Observer-Dispatch. You would scarcely know where you were by looking at the local paper, so generic are the Gannett newspapers.
We moved to the Utica area in 1997, and subscribed to the newspaper because we always did. We cancelled it after less than a year because it was junk and we simply could not take it anymore, especially when we could get the same stories from Yahoo! News, Excite, Google, or any number of other online sources free of charge. The O-D doesn't really inform us on any level, national or local. It sort of goes through the motions like a company of actors who already know their show has been cancelled. We feel as if Utica really doesn't have a local daily newspaper, and that's kind of sad. There is no soul in this paper - the only one in town - no feel for what Utica and Oneida County, New York, are about that a visitor might get from picking up a paper upon arrival here.
This is the problem, not that people do not have the patience to read the paper, or that they're too stupid, or too busy, or that their attention spans are too short. It's because the daily newspapers in too many locales in the United States do not offer anything intellectually stimulating about which to read. They either print fluff because it's non-threatening and unlikely to offend (or inform) anyone, and I don't have time for fluff, or they reprint the same old garbage like Applebees does when they open those plastic bags from Cisco and call it cuisine.
When I pick up a newspaper, I want the news, goddammit. I took journalism in high school, and I learned there that the most important content in an news story should be contained in the headline and the first couple of paragaphs. I shouldn't have to dig through a bunch of weaselly junk to get to the truth as if I were reading a Bush administration news release; it should jump out at me. It's called the inverted pyramid style; it's one of the most basic concepts of journalism. That is what allows people to scan even a major daily paper like the New York Times in twenty minutes, or pore over it for a couple of hours, whichever the reader is inclined to do. This is what seperates newsweeklies like Time from the daily paper. You don't need a whole new format for that. All you need is competent journalists who apply the fundamentals they supposedly learned in J-school. Unfortunately, these people appear to be in short supply nowadays - in America, not elsewhere. When I go to Canada, for instance, every dinky little town in Ontario has a daily paper, maybe two, that far exceed the Observer-Dispatch in quality. Do Canadians eschew newspapers like Americans do? I doubt it.