Of Gutenberg, Ghostbusters and future sweep of print journalism

Late February, Germany, in the year 1455. Johnny Gooseflesh, or as the locals call him, Johann Geisfleisch, sets aside his passion to be called Johnny Good Mountain (because he wants the locals to call him Johann Gutenberg instead) and gets around to inventing movable type. As a result, a Latin bible, the Gutenberg Bible, will go into history as the first printed book, with all of the implications for humanity’s manifest destiny held therein. Print is alive.

Early June, United States, in the year 1984.

Annie Potts, sitting at her desk on the set of “Ghostbusters,” says to Harold Ramis …

“You’re very handy I can tell. I bet you like to read a lot, too.”

Ramis: “Print is dead.” Potts: “That’s very fascinating to me; I read a lot myself. Some people think I’m too intellectual, but I think it’s a fabulous way to spend your spare time. I also play racquetball. Do you have any hobbies?”

Ramis: “I collect spores, molds and fungus.”

So there you have it. Not only the proof that momentous, related events can drop more than 500 years apart, but that they are capable of showing up together in reckless interpretations of world history such as this.

Print. Born 1455. Died 1984.

If you’re reading this on Tuesday, you know print is dead. Same as Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. Still, around here at least, print is very much alive Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays, because the Post-Gazette has been able to fight the postmortem battle for the printed word for 36 years.

But look around. Just this month, Californiabased McClatchy Newspapers filed for bankruptcy, imperiling the Miami Herald, The Charlotte Observer, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The Kansas City Star, and two dozen other local papers including Central Pennsylvania’s stalwart Centre Daily Times.

Those newsrooms and their dedicated, highly trained journalists won’t vanish overnight, but they all know they are now subject to the tyranny of the market. The McClatchy development wasn’t even the Media Dagger of the Month. That might have been when Alden Global Capital, aptly described in the Columbia Journalism Review as a hedge fund notorious for cost-slashing its media properties, purchased a 25% stake in Tribune Publishing, thus becoming its biggest shareholder.

That’s why Ken Doctor of the Nieman Journalism Lab told CNN that February brought a “major turning point for the industry. At a time when local news is needed more than ever, it is the bankers who are deciding what will be defined as news, and who will be employed to report it.”

In an era when American media is under existential threat from its own government, Google and Facebook have only marginal interest in preventing the further hollowing out of local journalism, instead undercutting local operations in the online ad market.

YouTube, which is owned by Google, can’t exactly profile as a champion of local journalism so long as it allows that video of Roanoke TV reporter Alison Parker being shot dead during a live spot in 2015. Her father is still fighting to get it removed.

“Nothing’s coming down; it’s crazy,” Andy Parker told The Washington Post. “I cannot tolerate them profiting from my daughter’s murder, and that’s exactly what they do.”

When that’s the mindset and the dark heart of the competition, it’s going to be one gargantuan task for local journalism to find any footing that will sustain itself. Nonprofit models have been explored and deployed with modest success, as with The Salt Lake Tribune, or with so-called “civic model” financing that some experts feel has shown promise. But in either case, journalism is being financed by some of the same entities journalism covers, and that’s potentially disastrous.

So Hollywood mogul/ predator Harvey Weinstein was brought down Monday by women who’d just had enough, courageous women aided by indefatigable journalists who helped them get to the truth, just as Jeffrey Epstein’s scandalous life got illuminated both by his brave victims and by the relentless Julie K. Brown of the Miami Herald.

“Folks, your subscription to your local newspaper and the journalists who work that newspaper will pay for your subscriptions in spades,” Ms. Brown tweeted after the McClatchy news. “Think about that ‘one’ city councilman who gave a milliondollar contract to his buddy — how did you know about it?”

You know who doesn’t think about the financial and cultural future of journalism all that much? Journalists. Most are just too busy, more overworked and underpaid than ever.

One night next week, Post-Gazette staffers will wedge in a few hours of socializing to note the accomplishments of some of our colleagues. Photographer Steph Chambers has been named the Sports Photographer of the Year in an international competition that’s been around for 77 years. She’s the first woman to win it. The sports department won the so-called Triple Crown from the Associated Press Sports Editors, joining other winners in the top circulation category including The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Newsday and the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Both those prestigious awards come on the heels of this newspaper winning the Pulitzer Prize and an Emmy.

Pretty sure I know what will happen that night. They’ll knock back a couple and go back to work.

The inescapable question is, “For how long?”

The more ominous question is, “For Pittsburgh, what then?”

Me, I suppose I could collect spores, molds and fungus.