L.E. Modesitt, Jr. - The Official Website

The Death of Newspapers

Newspapers are dying. The drum-beat goes on. Some readers are worried; others think their time has already passed. Yet another major city is threatened with the loss of all newspapers. Another newspaper cuts staff and sections to the bone. Book reviews are cut; business news is shortened; advertising revenues are plummeting.

In the meantime, I keep reading my local newspaper and the major daily paper in the state, and I notice things. The local paper trumpets its awards, and it has won a great number. So why does scarcely a day go by without a misspelled headline? In fact, the lead headline last Saturday read: "Mountain of Dept Faces US." If this is an award-winning local daily paper, I shudder to think about those that aren't. And why are all the "national" and "state" stories a day behind the large state newspaper? Why do all the major local scandals never make the local paper, but appear in the state paper?

As for the major paper, it's scarcely much better. Almost never does the weather section appear without errors. On Sunday, the weather temperatures predicted for the next two days -- by town statewide -- were listed as Thursday and Friday. On Saturday, the next two days were Monday and Tuesday. The lead headline the other day began "An State Issue..." Oh?

In both papers, syntax and grammar errors appear regularly, yet I can remember when it was rare to find these kinds of errors in newspapers, as opposed to being so common that any issue offers plenty of examples. These problems don't even take into account the quality of reporting and the choice of stories. The lieutenant governor of the state -- soon to become governor -- appeared at a national meeting of governors and made comments that indicated that he knew nothing about the global warming issue -- right after listening to [or at least sitting through] a speech on the issue by Dr. Stephen Chu, the U.S. Secretary of Energy... and the only story that appeared was days later in a political commentary story. One Utah author won a Newberry medal, and while it merited a TV news story, it never appeared in the paper, while a story about an author who wrote a novel about a platonic affair between a married Mormon woman and a British actor was a feature article. Unhappily, what I've seen here in Utah seems also to be happening in other locales, if perhaps not so egregiously.

Might a certain lack of quality have something to do with the decline of newpapers... or is it that the decline of advertising revenue means that newspapers are both understaffed and with fewer and fewer true professionals? Either way, it's a sad situation.

—L.E. Modesitt, Jr.: 7/14/2009 03:42:00 PM

Comments:

Two Questions, which I'm sure you know the answer. Who are the primary consumers of news? Are the papers written to appeal to this audience?

# posted by

Unknown : 4:27 PM

Even the mighty New York Times has had its share of problems over the past decade. Thankfully our culture is in decline, so it should be just a short amount of time before the Second Dark Age arrives.

# posted by

Curtis : 4:44 PM

It's a vicious circle. The lower the quality of the newspapers gets, the fewer people subscribe, so the fewer advertisers support the paper. Then the copyediting staff at the paper gets cut and everyone's more rushed, and the quality goes down further. I wish there were a way to stop the cycle. There's nothing like a good newspaper to read with breakfast... soon there may be nothing like a good newspaper, period.

# posted by

Tamary : 9:14 PM

Having many newspapers is not really a safeguard to the value of the news that they report. Although the number might have begun to decline recently, the quality of the news they published began declining long ago because a certain minority group gained control of newspaper chains and also control over their syndicated content. There has been much less independence, much less competition, between newspapers than a casual observer might believe.

In 1945, about 80% of America's newspapers were independently owned and published by local folks. Most of these independents were bought out, or driven out, of business by 1975. Now only about 10% of "local" newspapers are independent. Most of them are owned by Advance Publications or one of a few other large companies run by executives who live and work a thousand miles away.

Further, most local papers do not generate most of their own news. They don't send reporters abroad to get an independent assessment of what's going on. Instead, they rely on syndicated material from the Associated Press or from one of the major newspapers with a nation-wide circulation. These are the originators of the news, which the local guys merely copy.

So, in a sense, the big loss came 30 to 40 years ago, with the loss of original news-originators. What's happening now is merely a reduction in the number of echoes.

# posted by

David : 8:34 PM

I get your point, however, your books are full of grammatical errors, as are many other authors' books.

# posted by

Adam RainStopper : 8:57 PM

I think that authors sometimes put errors into their manuscripts just to see if their editors are paying attention.

"They rested little and savagely rode their powerful horses to a virtual standstill."

That sentence is from Michael Moorcock's "Weird of the White Wolf," 1977 DAW Paperback, p. 86.

# posted by

David : 7:17 PM

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