The Paperless City: Life after Newspapers

Over the past year many cities have lost newspapers. Detroit was the first city to experience this. The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News went from daily delivery to Thursday, Friday, and Sunday only. Soon afterward the Rocky Mountain News of Denver and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer of Seattle both closed. The Rocky Mountain News closed entirely while The Seattle PI and both Detroit papers still report the news online. The new methods of content delivery raise the question of what happens when a city loses its newspaper. An essay by Michael Sokolove published in the New York Times Sunday Magazine discusses this very subject.

What happens to a city without its paper?

Events that make up the news will obviously still happen, they are just broadcast much differently than in the past. A variety of sources now inform each reader as opposed to the past, when a single newspaper headline may have been the talk of the town. While variety gives readers more freedom, it prevents one single message from reaching all of a city’s residents.

The Loss of “The Paper of Record”

Sometimes, when a city loses a major paper it also loses its ‘paper of record,’ the paper designated by the government to publish public notices. The ‘paper of record’ for a city may also be the newspaper with the widest influence and the most authority. When this is lost, the news no longer has a singular (or dual, for cities with two papers) voice. A publicly displayed paper with an authoritative voice is important for a city; it broadcasts important events of the day and establishes the public timeline.

New Media picks up slack

Despite the loss of a daily paper, local news will still be reported and will likely grow in importance. As Cody mentioned in an earlier post, hyper-local news is becoming ever more important. The proliferation of hyper-local sources across the internet brings readers information that they can filter very specifically, even down to a single zip code.

So while the city without its paper is missing an authoritative voice that informs the collective memory, the vacuum left by the newspaper gets filled with news from other sources – from hyper-local blogs to news aggregators – ultimately offering readers more options for getting their news.

Post-Newspapers: Effects and Obstacles

Collective Memory

Collective memory is the shared history of a society. Differing from individual memory, it allows people to connect with each other based on shared historical events. Examples of events in the collective memory are 9/11 and JFK’s assassination. They prompt us to say “I remember where I was when…”

Without a citywide newspaper, the collective memory no longer has a singular reference point. Newspaper headlines act as the main indicators for major events. For example, one of the most famous headlines was from the Chicago Tribune proclaiming Dewey Beats Truman after the 1948 Presidential election. Another more recent example of a newspaper headline heavily influencing the collective memory is the New York Daily News headline Ford to City: Drop Dead.

Both of these examples illustrate the effect that newspaper headlines have on our societal memories and history. These headlines helped define particular eras in American history. Without the newspaper as a public record, our collective memory has fewer visual references to share. In fact, with a shift to online news, collective memory becomes fragmented. The availability of so many different news sources and news stories allows each reader to customize the news bubble they live in.

The loss of newspapers as visual reminders of collective memory is important. When collective memory disintegrates, our common bonds suffer. The possibility of having something in common with a stranger fades as individual news bubbles grow. The simple conversation starter “Have you seen the news today?” falls flat when the person we are talking to doesn't read the same things we do. Without knowledge of common events society fragments, leaving behind the idea that neighbors share more than a street name.

Access

One of the most pressing obstacles facing news consumption after the transition to internet is access. Newspapers that were once available on street corners, newsstands, and by delivery are now wholly transmitted over the internet.

A survey done by the Pew Internet and American Life Project finds that as of 2009 only 41% of households who make below $30,000 per year have access to the internet at home. This suggests that access is the biggest obstacle facing online news.

In the past, people who could not afford an entire paper had access to the news, even if it was just a headline. However, when a city loses its physical newspaper and migrates online, people who do not have internet access have limited exposure to the news of the city or world at-large. Now, even though the media still reports on the news, a significant portion of the population may simply not have access to it. Fortunately, the study from Pew also reports that the technology gap is closing, with double-digit increases in percentages of people who have adopted the internet at home since 2008.

Synthesis

The closure of newspapers in cities and towns across the country has a major effect on the consumption of news. Online news will only become more widespread and the variety of local news, once fully integrated into the web, will grow.

A city losing its paper marks a turning point in history. The daily newspaper was found on city streets and in corner stores for centuries. Today that common point of reference has been replaced by fragmented news sources and a diverse set of competing voices. With this change, readers must adjust to a new method of news consumption or fall out of the loop. Eventually, the city without a newspaper will be the rule and no longer the exception.

Comments

[David Ross]

I like the research you put into this article, especially on the digital disparity in the United States.

Headlines and websites are all cached though, and the idea that everything that gets posted to the internet is "permanent" is certainly accurate. I think libraries and the government needs to do a better job of compiling "information headlines". Even converting important headlines and articles to paper formats.
Why is it that Google is doing a better job than everyone else at keeping historical record of the internet? seems ironic that a private company is the 21st century Ovid.