There must be an ongoing tally somewhere of the number of stories in newspapers about the future of newspapers. In the grand scheme of things, the number is no doubt tiny, but there is an aura of self-pity (inflated by self-importance) about it.
I don't mean to suggest newspapers aren't important or interesting; compared to my peers, I might be characterized as a dinosaur for still having--what?!--print subscriptions. But the demise of news in general (many individual newspapers will survive) might actually be a good thing for us in terms of perspective. Let's start, first, with the present and future of newspapers: media aren't going away, but everyone seems to have a singular concern about newspapers. Why? The usual course of things is that if an industry can't give people what they want (and the desperation move by many mid-size city newspapers to have lots of short stories with three-inch headlines is pretty ridiculous), it will either adapt or die.
Such a fate is unthinkable to many regarding newspapers, however, because newspapers--we're told--have a special place in democratic self-rule. It's the Fourth Estate, after all. This would indeed be the overarching concern if it were the case that the government itself was shutting down newspapers. It has before, and
newspapers quite literally died. But not this time. This time it's the market. And yet it's also not the case that the demise of newspapers means the demise of news and information. Quite the contrary--it's sufficient to say here that the future of news and information is
quite bright.
OK, fine--most blog readers will agree up to this point, but note that I haven't adequately addressed the question of newspapers and democracy--aren't we losing an essential piece of democratic self-rule? Is the ruthless market destroying democracy? Not really. The nature of daily news is probably more corrosive of democracy than it is supportive. I'm not suggesting that daily news coverage is totally corrosive and totally non-supportive of democracy, simply that it's probably a little more of the former.
How can I say this? What about Watergate? The Pentagon Papers? What about the ties that bind us together as democratic citizens? The main reason daily news, as manifested by newspapers but also by other sources, might corrode democracy is that it telescopes our gaze almost completely on the here and now. The media has long been obsessed with exploring the present-centered weltanschauung of modern life--a state of affairs that the media, including newspapers, largely helped create. If newspapers are to be believed, each day is simply worse than the day before. Daily helpings of news distort one's perspective because they focus your eyes and brain on the moment, largely composed of detritus that will in time wash away and mean nothing to your life or to history writ large.
There is little room for reflection in the daily news, notwithstanding the superficial weekly attempt in the Sunday editions to reflect on the prior week's event and what they might mean for the future. The daily news is, by and large, superficial. This doesn't mean journalists are superficial--it's the nature of the subject matter, not the interlocutors. And there are exceptions, of course: in-depth stories, long features, etc, are all more helpful and more interesting than the daily news.
A democracy doesn't depend on constant, up-to-the-minute news any more than it depends on 100 percent voter participation. But don't we need newspapers to hold our elected officials accountable? If that's the primary raison d'etre of newspapers, then it's (a) a thin reed, and (b) they've done a pretty poor job of it during the Bush and Obama (so far) administrations. But what would we talk about at cocktail parties and conferences if not for newspapers? Maybe the demise of newspapers will prevent people from thinking they're smart simply because they read that day's Times or Journal. In fact, they might be smarter for having ignored them. And look, if something really big happens, you'll find about it.
Oddly, for all these reasons, blogging might offer a much better epistemology in terms of the flow and digestion of news. (I'm speaking generally here, about blogs qua genre--not all individual blogs will fall into these generalizations.) Bloggers often take the daily or weekly news and piece it all together in a larger narrative that is much more informative and useful than newspaper coverage. Because blogs can focus solely on a niche, they can offer much deeper analysis, which is the true stuff of democracy, not the story itself. Again, I'm speaking generally here, and a quick glance at my Google Reader demonstrates innumberable items that passionately dissect the minutiae of what Speaker Pelosi or Rep. Boehner said this morning. Still, on a possibly frivolous level, I have little doubt that sites like
Fangraphs and
Baseball Analysts are far more helpful for baseball fans than SportsCenter or the daily sports page. The same principle applies for more serious news.
Anyway, I probably sound pretty curmudgeonly here, and I'm certainly not the first one to make these points.
Nassim Taleb reserves a special place in his diatribes for newspapers. The point is that life will go on even when newspapers as we know them are gone. And life and democracy would still go on if the daily news disappeared or was greatly reduced in size. (But keep the op-ed pages--they're the best part.)