Following up on an earlier post about cause-and-effect of the newspapers’ decline, I wanted say that I realized only recently just how emotions cloud this discussion.
In particular, it’s very difficult to discuss the death of newspapers with the many many people who are emotionally-connected to them as a medium and who are convinced (in some cases rightly) that a lot of in-depth investigative journalism may suffer – if even temporarily – as a result of the death of this business. But more than that, these are people who spent years if not decades waking up and reading their papers in the morning. I still count myself one of those people – I read two papers before I leave the apartment every morning (okay, I skim big chunks of them).
So, for example, in the course of a discussion I had this weekend I mentioned to one person that, at the end of the day, newspapers have no one to blame but themselves for their decline. The reaction I got was pretty strong. Either it’s all the Internet’s fault or the economy’s fault – but the degree to which some people fail to acknowledge that newspapers AS A BUSINESS have just been poorly run is pretty striking.
At the end of the day, there are a confluence of many many factors: corporate consolidation, debt mismanagement, the failure to invest in R&D, the failure to figure out the Internet with well over a decade grace period given to work it out. But there’s something about these things that make it difficult for so many to rationally examine the causes. It’s too emotional a subject, and that blocks coherent analysis and discussion around their downfall. Blaming newspaper execs for mismanagement, for example, isn’t the same as saying “I hate newspapers and think they’re worthless.” But that’s how it sounds to the ears of some listeners.
And that’s one key reason why this particular media debate has stirred up passions to the degree that it has.
