print is dead?

Legacy media is changing faster than you can say “OK, Boomer.”

I’m old enough to remember when the shift from paper journalism to televised journalism signaled the death of the printed newspaper, which didn’t really happen. It changed how editors made news decisions, but didn’t obliterate print. I remember a TV news director telling me early in my career that we were tasked with explaining what is happening right now and the paper would fill in the details.

Now, many broadcast and social sites have more news gathering resources at their disposal than print platforms.

Many of my friends who have 20, 30, even 40 years as print journalists have already turned to the dark side of PR and marketing. I say dark side because many experienced journalists would turn their nose up at these career moves and regarded them as selling out. As print newsrooms across the country are gutted, the concept of “selling out” looks attractive when it comes with a dependable paycheck and benefits.

So what’s next for a medium that has been around since Gutenberg pressed ink into vellum?

Models of a non-profit approach to print journalism are being deployed in several communities. Much like public radio, these platforms use a hybrid of donations and advertising generated revenue to underwrite their efforts. (I get it, advertising is really sponsorships but it’s essentially the same.) One such example is the American Journalism Project which makes grants to non-profit organizations that are launching mission-based newsrooms with a focus on local reporting. https://www.theajp.org/why-local-news/

Most major news gathering outlets focus on national or international topics. Reporting on school boards, city councils, highway departments, or planning commissions is boring stuff. Unfortunately these are the topics that directly affect our daily lives. As we’ve seen with recent protests at school board meetings, these are the organizations that impact our kids and our communities.

What would happen if this level of reporting dissolves? It means that we either take the initiative to attend those plan commission meetings as interested citizens, or we look for journalists to be our eyes and ears.

Take a minute and look at what the American Journalism Project is doing–and remember that a free press is really no longer free.

My network of reporter/editor friends got some great chuckles out of recent gaffes in regional papers. Nothing entertains a bunch of journalists like implied (or actual) swear words in 36 point type. When you traffic in the printed or spoken word, mistakes are part of the landscape.

Usually an editor reviews final copy before it hits production or the air. Veteran journalists are fairly trustworthy when writing copy or headlines. But that’s just the problem—there aren’t many veteran journalists left.

In the last months, print newsrooms across the country have been slashed to the bone with budget cuts. Staffers with seniority and higher wages based on experience and ability have been trimmed from the balance sheet—along with their institutional knowledge. We can argue the failing business model of newspapers all day long and blame everything on the internet, but there’s a bigger issue here.

Trust me on this: you WANT experienced journalists on the job if only to perform their most important function as a watchdog. That’s an old-fashioned term that has a lot of modern implications.

In your busy life, will you ever attend a city council meeting? Do you have time to sit through floor debate at the legislature? Do you know your elected officials, your zoning committee or your school board personally?

You want a reporter at these meetings questioning why legislation is being proposed. You want a reporter asking why a zoning variance is being granted to a developer. You need a reporter following policy changes that could affect your childrens’ schools.

Journalists are trained to be the fourth estate—the unofficial branch of the government that monitors the political process to ensure the players don’t abuse the democratic process. That means they watch, they listen, they ask questions. But now there are fewer on the street asking those questions.

Journalists are also bound by a code of ethics in their newsroom and answer to editors who verify sources, strive for objectivity and hold them accountable. Sure, you can always find out more on the internet, but it’s caveat emptor. How do you know the author has checked sources or even if the author is a real person? And with a nod to history, most web-based content is only slightly better than the yellow journalism of 1900.

I never thought I would see the day when a local TV newsroom has more feet on the ground than the local paper. But that day is here.

If you’re interested, find me at mkathrynschmidt@gmail.com.