Wednesday, Friday, Sunday News

Newspapers aren't dead.
Well, newspapers might be dead. Certainly the news this week that the Birmingham News (my old paper), the Mobile Press-Register, the Huntsville Times, and the New Orleans Times-Picayune are no longer going to be dailies, but instead will be publishing three days a week - Wednesday, Friday and Sunday - does not bode well for the future of reading news, sports, comics, classified, and shopping coupons from hard copy.
Having spent most of my life working for daily newspapers, I couldn't help but think of what was going to be lost.
No Saturday paper means no more easy reading of Friday night football scores. No more pictures from local high school fields and seeing the local hero's name in headlines.
 I can't even begin to describe the madness that was a Friday night in the sports department. A team of reporters and stringers - part timers hired to answer calls and ask the right questions to fill out pre-printed statistical forms from which game summaries would be written - waited at desks around the news room, waiting. Sometimes we'd have pizza, or someone would bring in some treat, and we'd all talk and tell stories and catch up on each other's lives. Then the phones would start ringing, and it seemed like all the game reports came in at the same time. As they filled out the game reports, someone else was writing up brief stories, and someone else was loading the statistical summary of the game (the boxscore or linescore) that would appear in the next day's paper.
You'd like to say it was a well-oiled machine, but it wasn't. It was chaos. More phones would be ringing than there were people to answer them. The team statistician would not have full names for the opposing team - sometimes would not have names for the opposing team at all - and sometimes the statistics were so unbelievable. There was one school, in particular, whose statistician would call in and inevitably they'd have a running back who'd rush for 200 yards and a quarterback who would throw for 300 and their defense would hold the other team to next to nothing, yet his team would lose 30-0. Once or twice, maybe you could explain it. But this was consistent, Friday night after Friday night.

I can't help but believe high school kids, coaches, parents and fans won't miss holding a hard copy showing results of their games on Saturday morning.

Monday, of course, was an easy way to get all the linescores from NFL games. And standings. It was a great way to see stats and highlights. Not to mention "day after" news and notes from Saturday's college games.

And so on.

Not that this stuff won't continue to be available - which is why I say newspapers aren't dead. They will continue. Just online.
But it's got to be tough to fill a scrap book with print outs from computer stories.
If kids and parents even keep scrapbooks anymore.

The good news, I think, is that this change in the business won't reduce the need for reporters and writers. There is still a demand for content - and, hopefully, reliable content, which means from professional reporters and writers.
However, the downside is deadlines. Every reporter needs deadlines. In the ancient days when the print edition was important, you had to have time to get a story researched, written, and pass through copy editors who would not only make sure the story conformed to style but also that it made sense - that is, that there weren't unsupported "facts" in the story or unsupportable suppositions. Many times, particularly in my early days, I'd turn in what I thought was a perfect story, only to have a really good copy editor send it back, challenging me on details and supporting evidence and conclusions.
But as newspapers modernized and computerized, deadlines got worse. I'm not sure why. It was supposed to be those things were going to make it better, but it never did. Deadlines became earlier and more strict.
Now, of course, there are no deadlines. The story can go online as soon as it's ready. The problem is, the rush for content can outweigh the need for checking details and balance.
The motto used to be "get it first, but first get it right." Now, the rush to get the story out there first means reporters can't wait for a secondary source to get back, or for the other side to offer their say on what is being reported.
Oh, sure, the story can be updated repeatedly, but once a version is out, there is no taking it back. And, unfortuantely, I've seen on-line editors who are never as quick to post the updated version of a story because they're already looking for the next 'breaking' story.

And copy editors no longer have time to read and challenge the writer. The rush to be first outweights the need to make sure the story is "right.'' And it's easy to hide behind the idea of, "well, those are the facts as we had them at that time."
Copy editors now are simply there to code the stories and load them onto the web. Some reporters already do that themselves, totally eliminating copy editors. That breaks down the chain of checks and balances - reporters who have to answer to copy editors, and copy editors who force reporters to really think through what they are reporting, aware that they'll be challenged on whatever they write before the first member of the general public ever sees it.


All of this simply puts more responsibility on the reader. Because of the internet, we have more access to more information sources than ever. Some of that information will be good, some will be wrong. Some will be biased, some will be balanced.
I'm not afraid of all the access to new media. Personally, I find it important to read both Drudge and the Huffington Post; Human Events and Politico. I don't trust any of them completely, but I find that if I read both presentations, I am able to develop, hopefully, a truer sense by which to interpret what is really going on.

The danger is that it is also possible for me to get my 'news' only from the people who I tend to agree with, who feed my pre-established opinions and bias.
I do believe we're a divided nation. There is no question there is a dramatic difference in Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative. For that matter, spend time talking to people from the Northeast or the far West, and their view of this country is so different than that of people from the Midwest and South that it's like two different countries. And that's scary.

But what has always concerned me is that the more information we have access too, the less information we take in. The local newspaper at least gave us one source that most people read, a commonality of information from which to agree and disagree, and held local officials somewhat accountible.

I understand Thomas Jefferson's opinions on media changed. But I still think he was right when he said, "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."

We're a long way from Jefferson. And a lot closer to a government without newspapers.