Sunday March 22, 2009
Lament for a losing cause
Unless you live in Seattle, you probably didn\’t know that the last print edition of the Post-Intelligencer newspaper came out last Tuesday.
The newspaper was 146 years old. It had chronicled events since loggers skidded logs down Seattle\’s steep streets into the harbour, since would-be gold miners caroused in its bars before heading north to Alaska and the Klondike.
The Hearst Corporation put the paper up for sale in January. When no buyers appeared, Hearst decided to close the printed version of the paper. The Post-Intelligencer will now attempt electronic delivery.
The Post-Intelligencer is not alone in its troubles. In Denver, the Rocky Mountain News closed earlier this year. Tuscon\’s Citizen published its last issue on Saturday. The San Francisco Chronicle is likely to fold.
In recent months, the owners of the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Philadelphia Inquirer have all sought bankruptcy protection.
The price of progress?
From what I can see, no newspaper today is thriving financially. The Kelowna Courier, for which I write, has pared staff and shrunk the size of its pages in an effort to remain viable.
Maybe this is all part of progress. After all, printing presses put town criers out of business. Television wiped out Movietone news clips. Perhaps printed newspapers must inevitably give way to Internet blogs, RSS feeds, and Google searches.
But something\’s lost in the process.
A newspaper is a physical object. It requires a lot of technology to produce, but only the most basic human technology to read — your eyes and your mind.
Not so with newer technologies. Without a computer to translate the ones and zeros of binary code and the blips and bleeps of modem transmission into words and pictures on your screen, the content is inaccessible.
Paper itself is merely the medium of transmission.
Captives of technology
We have become captives of technology. Over time, we humans have used a huge variety of media – from storytelling to clay tablets to papyrus scrolls to magnetized molecules. Until now, we needed only eyes and/or ears to decode the message.
The National Library in Ottawa, for example, is mandated to archive everything published in Canada. A friend tells me that its biggest problem is maintaining equipment to play everything from wax cylinders to 12-inch floppy disks and eight-track tapes.
Recently, I visited a home that was literally stacked full of piano rolls. Each roll will play only on a particular brand of player piano. When the last of those pianos breaks down, the encoded music will disappear.
When the last native speaker of an ancient dialect dies, so does the language. Even if we still have a written record, we no longer know how to pronounce those words, how to inflect those sentences.
The medium and the message
As Marshall McLuhan pointed out more than 40 years ago, the medium shapes the message. Reading a fairytale is not the same as hearing it. The Book of Kells is more than the raw text of the Christian gospels.
Electronic books may contain the same words as a printed one, but they lack its tactile appeal. When I turn pages, I\’m also aware of three-dimensions — where those words belong in a stack of pages, where they appear on a page.
By contrast, I have little sense of what precedes this electronic “page” I\’m reading, and none of what may follow it. Even the appearance of a web page depends on my computer\’s settings.
As Eric and Marshall McLuhan pointed out in their book, Laws of Media, a new technology does not replace an older technology – it transforms the older technology into a special interest. Cars did not eliminate horses; they changed riding from necessity to recreation. Television did not kill movies; it turned them into an art form.
So I\’m confident the Internet will not eliminate books. Some people will always prefer the feel of fine paper in their hands, will appreciate quality binding, thoughtful design, readable typefaces…
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If you want to order my books, you can call 1-800-663-2775 in Canada, 1-800-328-0200 in the U.S., or order them on-line at the Wood Lake Books website.
For a lighter look at ethics, faith, and life, I recommend Ralph Milton\’s weekly e-newsletter Rumors. You can subscribe to it at the Wood Lake Books home page in Ralph Milton\’s Site, or by sending a note directly to [email protected].
It\’s also worth pursuing Charlene Fairchild\’s United Online site. Another site worth visiting is David Keating\’s \”SeemslikeGod\” page.
I\’m less sure about newspapers like the Post-Intelligencer. Of course, we\’ll miss the rustle of pages at the breakfast table, the smear of semi-dried ink on our fingers…
But the primary virtue of newspapers is neither their paper nor their immediacy. We can get news quicker through other media. It\’s their filtering. The news that we read has passed through a number of mental scrutineers before it reaches us. Its facts have been checked, its opinions tested.
Contrast that with a typical internet blog – one person\’s opinion, often biased, reflecting only the writer\’s own experience…
We also trust the printed newspaper to compile the news we need to know about. Every page contains multiple stories. Some appeal to me; some don\’t. But they\’re all presented for my attention.
With electronic news services, I get only what I ask for. I\’m not exposed to other issues, other viewpoints.
Love \’em or hate \’em, if newspapers disappear we will lose a medium that by its nature forces us to be more widely informed, and thus, I would hope, more tolerant.
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Copyright © 2009 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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