Stephen Hume looks at what the next 100 years may bring
News stories, on paper or through electrons, help advance the public discussion that’s part of democracy
As The Vancouver Sun’s first 100 years recedes in a warm wash of nostalgia — and I, for one, am not sentimental about its passing — the newspaper’s next exciting century approaches at the speed of light.
The analogy is apt. The Vancouver Sun of your future is destined to come wrapped increasingly in electrons rather than dead trees, although I expect the print editions to stick around for some time.
In 1992, the number of people viewing digital pages of this newspaper was zero. In 2008, The Vancouver Sun’s website page views exceeded 70 million. In 2011, the total number of online page views was close to half a billion. This doesn’t include the almost 18.5 million — and growing exponentially — page views on smartphones and tablets.
And who at The Vancouver Sun of 1912 could imagine that the newspaper would be publishing a Chinese edition online, which in the first weeks of its existence would attract close to 300,000 page views?
It seems the blink of an eye since I was a young reporter writing about teachers struggling with the ethical dilemma of whether students should be permitted to use pocket calculators to find solutions to math and physics problems during exams.
The story then was educators’ fear that permitting students to use calculators might erode their ability to do basic math.
The story now is kids who hack into the Pentagon, publish diplomatic secrets on the Internet by the hundreds of thousands, hobnob online with their favourite musicians, writers and hockey stars, find virtual soulmates in Moscow and Masset, New York and New Sarepta, raise funds for charities and bring down brutal dictatorships with their cellphones, email and idealism.
The story just emerging is that the children of those kids once thought to be menaced by calculators now take their notes on ipads, will soon be packing textbooks in e- libraries instead of backpacks and already invent new languages for texting and tweeting from their smartphones.
Their generation marks society’s transformation by communications technology and they, and the generation now coming up, are in turn transforming the world with their use of that technology. The Vancouver Sun is being transformed by these forces, too.
Please note that what doesn’t change in this brief evolutionary tale is The Story and the telling of it.
I never forget that newspapers are merely a vehicle — a temporary delivery platform in the argot of the digital age — for delivering content; for bringing readers The Story.
And not just any story, not ideological propaganda or self- serving institutional bumf or unchallenged rumours or malicious falsehoods, but stories gathered and told by reporters who strive for balance and objectivity.
Stories processed by editors concerned with clarity and accuracy.
Stories commented upon by columnists who seek to advance the public discussion that is a democracy conversing with itself through a diversity of voices expressing informed opinions.
Stories commented upon by readers whose engagement with their newspaper also seems likely to increase, so that they, too, become enmeshed in the media, which seems destined to become a more custom- designed product to serve an audience comprised of many niche markets rather than the 20th century’s one- size- fitsall mass market.
At The Vancouver Sun, we gather, edit and bring to readers more than 125,000 news items a year. I estimate that the newspaper — and it’s a rough estimate — publishes an encyclopedia’sworth of current information every 12 months.
Yet whether the platform is paper or electrons, it’s the content that’s important. Or to appropriate the marketers’ talking point for The Vancouver Sun of the future, which I think happens to be accurate, “Times Change, Trusted News Doesn’t.”
I started my career in the age of manual typewriters and then progressed to a miraculous “portable” computer. It was the size of a small suitcase. It came with 5K of RAM, an acoustic coupler that let me transmit stories over a telephone line. Its blackandwhite screen was half the size of the backlit, full- colour screen on my hand- sized iphone, which has approximately six million times the computing capacity of that first “luggable” that I found so mesmerizing.
There’s another way to look at this technological revolution. The reporter has been liberated from the newsroom. A long- dead city editor once told me the truth: “Nothing happens in the newsroom that readers care about, and if it does, I’ll be sure to let you know.” In those days, however, we all had to spend hours there typing up stories that copy chasers would carry to typesetters. Now reporters can cover events in real time with readers following feeds on Twitter or live blogs and, whether my colleagues like it or not, this is increasingly the future.
At the start of The Vancouver Sun’s second century, I carry a pocket- sized folding keyboard that connects to my smartphone wirelessly. I take notes, write my columns and then email them to the office from a device I carry in my pocket. I use a pen that remembers what I write and uploads it to my computer, where it’s translated into digital text. This was science fiction in 1966. Now it’s mundane reality.
Thirty years ago as an editor overseeing a newspaper’s conversion from letter press to high- speed offset, one of the battles I fought with conservatives in that newsroom was over the advent of colour photos. Some thought replacing black and white images with colour would diminish the authenticity of the paper.
The argument was fierce, although I was mystified by the objections. If most people see in colour, shouldn’t colour images be more rather than less authentic?
Today, in the digital editions of your Vancouver Sun, you may peruse whole galleries of striking colour images. Videos and interactive charts and graphics mean that information is animated. In the future, the visual image seems certain to become increasingly embedded in the text, until we have seamless hybrids of storytelling that I can’t even imagine.
New technology has already generated a whole new dimension for content.
Photographers once limited to a few images on the printed page can now display portfolios, increasing the breadth and depth of coverage by accompanying words with photo essays. Your newspaper becomes a virtual art gallery.
So what will your Vancouver Sun be like a hundred years from now when some young reporter will evoke these musings from the database for a nostalgia piece? I have no idea, and anybody who tells you they do know is fibbing.
I do know that my successors in 2112, just like my predecessors in 1912, will be doing one thing that won’t have changed — bringing readers The Story about the world in which they live with as much accuracy, clarity, drama and passion as they can.