No News is not good news

And thus newspapers,one of the greatest artefacts of the modern age,are facing extinction. In the same behavioural pattern,however,also lies the incongruity,something that means this isnt just another product whose time has passed like the music cassette or broadcast television. Unlike them,people havent stopped having a use for newspapers,nor have they been replaced by a superior product. Its just that no one sees the need to pay for the news anymore.

Of course,theres more to it.

Advertisements were newspapers engine of profit,not subscriptions. And the story is gloomier there. Craigslist and company effectively wiped out classifieds; the promise of online advertisements has failed. One widely held belief was that online ads would grow at a rate to more than compensate for the loss of print ad revenues. Thats why papers put their entire content online free of cost attract more readers (or,in reductionist Internet terms,viewers). The viewers came,but the ad money hasnt yet followed.

The bleeding,on the other hand,wasnt deferred. Just this week,The Seattle Post-Intelligencer published its last copy,while last month saw the last issue of Rocky Mountain News. Both were older than their home states of Washington and Colorado respectively. The largest papers are hit,too: the holding company of the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times,no neighborhood tabloid,recently declared bankruptcy. The San Francisco Chronicle is barely surviving at an unsustainable rate of loss. Even The New York Times,by far the most influential newspaper in the world,had to first mortgage and then sell part of its brand new office building at the Times Square to keep the cash flowing.

What is especially ironic is that the country in which newspapers are coming face to face with their mortality is the country on whose history they have had perhaps the most profound influence. Newspapers,sometimes written,edited and published by the same person,played a central role in the political and social life of America. The first amendment to the American constitution,guaranteeing an absolute freedom to the press,is a testimony to their importance to American public life.

So what? The newspaper,some might say,is not synonymous with news. The Internet has democratised information; cable news channels proliferate. Yet neither of those mediums are adequate substitutions. Television needs to grab eyeballs leading to the overzealous breaking-news,sound-bite culture. Moreover,primetime news is now dominated entirely in America (and increasingly in India) by so-called opinion shows where partisan actors shout at each other. Blogs can be a source of insightful commentary,but are on the whole rather whimsical,personality driven and lacking the resources for in-depth reporting.

Newspapers,on the other hand,maintain a large newsroom with reporters often devoting months to a story. A thousand-word article,published at the end of the day,has the ability to provide a degree of context and reflection that is rarely ever achieved by television. In this it comes close to performing one of the most difficult intellectual functions provide an understanding of an event or a time that is still being lived. Its relatively relaxed timeline allows it to perform certain journalistic duties,ensuring that its story carries greater weight,authority and comprehension than achievable by any other medium. It is difficult to imagine,for example,a news channel of record. The timeline and resources also means newspaper journalists can penetrate the PR cloud maintained by todays powerful. This is why,for three centuries,the newspaper has acted as the most effective platform for us,the citizens,to speak truth to power,to challenge and check it. Does it always do it well? No. Would anything else do it better? Not even close. And that is why the widespread distress at the possible demise of the newspaper is much more than a romantic longing for the leisurely feel of shifting through your morning paper with a cup of coffee (and,for some incorrigible souls like yours truly,a cigarette). It is a deep sense of foreboding at the possible loss of one of the primary tools through which we,the modern human beings,make sense of our world.

The writer is a New York-based political scientist

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