Today, on the cusp of 25 years into the 21st Century, news matters just as much as it ever has, and newspapers – or at least the idea of newspapers – also matters just as much if not more than other times in modern history.
Go back 100 years and newspapers were the most prolific form of media in the U.S. and the world. Effects from The Progressive Era shifted newspapers’ content from sensationalist yellow journalism aiming to make a quick dime to a renewed focus on democratic values like truth, free speech, equality and others important to America’s forefathers and numerous historical figures of the past.
Newspapers were trusted for their printed form. For those of us who recall electric typewriters and even earlier versions of printing. Correcting mistakes was not easy. Misspell one word – let alone get a fact wrong – and you had to use liquid whiteout to correct the mistake – though annoyingly evidence of that mistake remained. Photos too were viewed perhaps not so much for their attractiveness, but more for their ability to serve as evidence of something that occurred. Printing a newspaper with the potential for thousands of errors took some hard work on behalf of those working in the press.
And it took some work from the reader as well. Newspapers required readers to follow along the mental path laid out by a journalist to connect the dots – or facts as it were. If the dots didn’t create the correct constellation of information, then either the journalist, editor or reader might have missed an important point.
In a time when Americans seem to be living in a divergent society, it’s interesting to think about how reading the news forces a meeting of the minds. The hard work put into newspapers on both sides of the page creates a trust between the journalist and reader. The journalist has to be a guide to take the reader through each fact and detail to find the truth. It’s a partnership.
“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter,” said Thomas Jefferson.
Today we still have important newspapers educating communities and societies across the world. In the U.S. the most prosperous papers are at the hyper-local and national levels. They provide invaluable information to help citizens make important choices. Newspapers today – whether in print or online – provide the details that matter and that other forms of news don’t have the time to explain. Print and digital newspapers today still provide the long-form journalistic reports that aren’t cut off too soon by commercials. In fact, now with the infinite space of the internet, stories can be as long as they need to be.
News is always changing, just like all media. Every time a new medium comes along (radio, TV, internet, mobile, etc.) it doesn’t cancel out those cherished and long-held standards of the past, but rather joins them. The market share changes as these new forms shift societal trends and also alter how best those other mediums should function. But they persist as we still see today with newspapers, magazines and books. There are terrific print and digital versions of all sorts. There are the traditional and the modern, and they all play an important role in the mediated public sphere that so much of our world depends upon today to function.
Like all industries, there are ups and downs over time. When I entered the field of journalism in the early 21st Century I was scared by the doomsday prophets saying it was the end of the print era, but I ignored them. The next couple decades would bring a second war in Iraq, Wall Street protests, housing crises, The Great Recession and what seemed like relentless problems that spelled trouble for many industries and individual U.S. citizens alike. The news industry and others weren’t sure how to profit from their content when audiences were now getting so much of it for free online. I bemoaned the passing of the late 20th Century, which I had perceived as an era of classic investigative journalism when it was appreciated and paid for by subscriptions.
But now nearly 25 years into the new millennium, there are plenty of jobs and plenty of growth in newspapers, as well as the entire field of journalism. News is an “elite industry” where we don’t pump out thousands of nurses and engineers that are so needed around the country. To craft the news takes time and skill, but there only needs to be so many bylines in a paper. Students entering the field of journalism will be opinion leaders for thousands of busy citizens who depend on them to get the story right. They’ll be joining “the press club,” an important societal institution also known as “the fourth estate,” which has been around since the founding of our country.
I’m fortunate and encouraged every day to see the wonderful work being done by student journalists here at UW-Whitewater. At the Royal Purple we still put out a printed paper that is agonized over for hours to ensure there aren’t errors – though there undoubtedly always will be some. Those quarterly seasonal issues contain the best feature stories the students have written for 5,000 issues to be put out in 75 news stands across the city. And we’re happy to report that when it’s time for the next issue, there are very few left out in those stands. Online the students cover weekly events, arts, sports and important topics while they learn to work at a faster pace to meet deadlines. They research, interview, write, photograph, design and use digital media to expand the printed paper into a much larger version of itself that couldn’t be accomplished without digital infrastructure. Seeing this passion and hard work assures me that perhaps more than ever, whether print or digital, papers today still craft news that matters.