Newspapers Dying: Why Should We Care?

We all know that newspapers are dying quickly but even the most avid proponents of newspapers among us don’t put it as strongly as Paul Starr who argues that newspapers are an essential component of our democracy, serving to keep governments in check and to reduce corruption and still serving as the main source of original reporting in our society. (Starr wrote a great article on this subject in The New Republic in March. )
Starr, a professor of communications and public affairs at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School and author of “The Creation of the Media,” and "Freedom's Power" was the keynote speaker at a conference on “The Newspaper Crisis” that was filled with doom and gloom and perhaps a few glimmers of hope.
The conference also featured two panels on the newspaper crisis in new jersey and possible solutions to the crisis. In those panels, Jim Willse editor of the Star-Ledger, detailed how his newspaper has dealt with cutbacks of 45 percent of its staff and Steven Engelberg, managing editor of ProPublica, discussed a non-profit model for journalists. (More on them in future blogs).
New Jersey is not immune from the effects of the decline of newspapers, Starr argued. The state “has long suffered a news deficit,” and with cutbacks at all the major newspapers. Where once there were 50 reporters covering state government in Trenton there are now just 15 and that means state residents get less news about what the government is doing and less news going to the general public. But there are many cities that may wind up with no daily newspaper at all.
Online publications do well serving people who want one type of news, Starr pointed out. If you want sports, you can find plenty of sports sites online. But while the sports fan who picks up the newspaper also gets a smattering of news if only from the headlines, the sports fan who goes online only gets sports.
While some online sites provide original reporting, most depend on newspapers for their content, Starr said. Now the Associated Press is hoping to get search engines like Google to pay them for content but no one knows if that will work or if it will provide enough money to really help newspapers. Other alternatives could be to make newspapers non-profits.
One model could be National Public Radio that depends on government and corporate grants and listener donations to survive. “It has become the last refuge of real journalism on radio,” he said.
Some countries, like France, directly subsidize the media. But that obviously has problems of its own because it could affect the media’s independence, Starr said.
Access to online news also depends on people’s income, education and political interest, Starr said. People who are already interested in news can find news sources online but it may be less accessible to less educated people who aren’t accustomed to finding information online. That means fewer people will be able to make informed decisions, Starr said.
“This is an old problem of democracy coming back in a new form,” Starr warned, “and the future of Democracy is at stake.”