Losing a great American art form

Photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash

“Taped on refrigerators and tacked up over desks, its wisdom is folded in wallets, or mailed to friends … the best of it rises to the level of literature, balancing the urgency of news with the precision of poetry.”

That quote is from Deadline Artists: America’s Greatest Newspaper Columns (Overlook Press, 2011) and it speaks of newspaper clippings - real clippings, on paper, cut out with scissors because something important appeared on the paper, written there in type; words so meaningful that one took the time to clip them.

I’m writing this online so it may seem a bit hypocritical, but I miss newspapers, real newspapers — daily local newspapers, printed on large sheets of newsprint, folded vertically and again horizontally to fit nicely on newsstands and in your hands: you can open a spread of two complete pages with a wide wingspan or fold an entire section of, say 12 pages, into one-fourth the size so as not to bother the guy sitting next to you at the diner — or on the bus, or at the ballgame.

I’m tactile like that, but there’s more to this nostalgia …

A friend reminded me of great autumnal memories of waking up Saturday morning, finding the paper on the front steps — thrown there by the paperboy, opening the sports section and studying all the regional high school football scores of the night before; ditto the college scores the following day.

And the columnists — the syndicated, yes, but especially local writers covering everything from council and school board meetings, sports, human-interest stories and so much more — and the ever-popular police-beat column, the arts, comics, and movie times, etc.

There are a few left — and some former dailies now print two or three days a week — but it’s not nearly the same. I can remember the halcyon days of two local dailies, an early morning and an afternoon paper.

Professor R. K. Nielsen is director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford. In an interview last year he told the newstatesmen.com,

“Print has been dead for a long time for many people. Print is still somewhat important for a minority of the population over 65, and it does mean something to those old enough to have grown up with it, the over-45s. But even among the older group it’s a minority. It’s a niche medium that serves a small and shrinking audience well.” Ouch.

One positive note: a Canadian province recently took a creative step to help save local newspapers — and it doesn’t involve taxpayer subsidies. On a recent trip to Ontario, I read (holding in my ink-stained fingertips) in the National Post that “to promote local content and culture and support Ontario jobs,” the government directed provincial corporations — Ontario Lottery & Gaming, the Liquor Control Board, and other provincial government agencies — to direct 25% of their annual advertising budget, which is reportedly over $100 million, to Ontario’s news publishers, beginning September 3. Of course, it’s up to the publishers to ensure the revenue is used wisely, but on the surface, it seems hopeful to those in Ontario who are tactile readers.

Good for them, but in the U.S., it feels like we are losing a great American art form.