...to remember when this idyllic past never existed. Ever.The unwillingness of people to read newspapers - digital or in print - is a gigantic tragedy and is part of the story of democratic decline. https://t.co/Da16x0GkYh
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) July 24, 2021
Before Joseph Pulitzer, newspapers were partisan rags. “Yellow journalism” existed well into the 20th century. Orson Welles made a famous movie about it.
When that was finally conquered, newspapers became the voice of received wisdom, which eventually created democracy destroying foolishness like Whitewater and the search for WMD’s in Iraq.
And I remember the “liberal” newspaper in Dallas, and the “conservative” one. Houston had the same. The former disappeared. Is that when democracy declined in both cities, which are more liberal and politically vibrant now than they were in my childhood?
And of course there’s the “everybody but me and thee” appeal of this argument. Just read some of the tweets attached to it.
This is sheer eyewash.
This made me curious. Newspapers have been in steady decline since reaching a peak in about 1985, well before the internet had much of any presence. I don't remember 1985 being an era of enlightened, intelligent and responsible journalism.
ReplyDeleteThe newspapers are victims of a lot of things but one thing is clear, getting news on paper delivered daily or weekly isn't going to be what it once was anymore than getting the news by Morse code is. They'll either figure out ways to support online news venues or things will go back to before newspapers had much influence, which they claim first started to become important in the United States in the 1830s, again, hardly an era of informed enlightenment.
I don't know if it's still true but Callie Crossley used to point out that racial and ethnic weeklies and community newspapers were holding their own a few years back. I'd like to know the extent to which that's true today.