We’ll get the last laugh
Every so often, young people visit us here at the word factory to see if they would like to pursue careers in journalism. Given the politically motivated badmouthing of the industry these past 30 years, a visit to a newspaper might seem an unlikely choice.
It is possible that some of the youngsters view it like a field trip to one of those museums featuring antique characters in period costume who show how folks lived and worked in the good old days. Look! There’s a journalist, scowling, all rumpled and gnarly, his tie stained from the cafeteria soup of the day, crouched over a keyboard or cadging a doughnut left over from the union meeting. But enough about me for the moment.
Actually, what strikes me about our young visitors is that most seem genuinely interested in journalism. They seem brighter and more talented than I was at their age and less rough around the edges—some even know how to use a knife and fork. My superficial impression that they are the future turns out to have some substance.
Caroline Little, president and CEO of the Newspaper Association of America, wrote last month, “The digital audience for newspapers hit a new high of 164 million in August, and that growth was driven by young adults, particularly women.” (Data for October pushed the number to 166 million.)
Print is not dead, either. To the shock of doomsayers, this newspaper recently installed new state-of-the-art presses at a facility near Pittsburgh International Airport. To mark the occasion, Roman Catholic Bishop David Zubik and Rabbi James Gibson presided over a blessing of the presses. This promised to be a singular event in my newspaper career—a moment when the sacred and profane confronted each other.
But when the men of the cloth blessed the presses, and the force of the ecumenical met the shades of the typographical, it seemed at least half a chance for an Exorcist moment, only with demon typos sent shrieking out the door.
Instead, it was rather sedate. Sadly, the full effects of the blessing are not yet evident. Not only are grammatical errors still made, but the reading public remains bedeviled by ridiculous editorials. However, the Lord moves in a mysterious way, His headlines to perform.
Viewed from the approaching end of my career, there’s a greater blessing to be discerned: that after a long and miserable night, the newspaper industry is emerging again into the light. It’s been a horrible time, with many jobs lost and readership down, but the industry survives.
And now there’s no way to go but up, because of a simple fact that perennial critics forget: What the age of information needs is reliable, professionally gathered information. Bloggers in pajamas can’t do it all, not that there’s anything wrong with pajamas.
Certainly, newspapers are evolving and in the future may exist in a different form than a bundle of paper thrown over a fence to the peril of lurking cats. But for the moment, let cats and internet trolls beware. Lamestream media, you say? Nah, more like bloodstream media, as ever feeding the beating heart of the republic.
Forgive my annoying optimism. I followed my father into the business and have proudly been a newspaperman for more than 40 years. For the last 25, I have been told that my career was imminently doomed, due to the internet. While this proved professionally fatal to many, reports of the industry’s death have been greatly exaggerated.