The excited cries of paperboys on street corners are rapidly fading American oldsters’ memories. Late night movies occasionally refresh memories of a time when newspapers were breakfast staples as important as coffee.
Cities and towns across the country had several competing papers that published multiple editions. Hot news rated extra editions that were hawked to readers on the street. Newspapers were devoured on streets, busses and subways as well as the breakfast table. The movers and shakers of the period read several daily papers.
Newspapers had many lives; they were passed from reader to reader. At the end of the day street people gave discarded papers a last read then used them as blankets for the night, merchants wrapped fish in them and housewives cleaned windows with them.
Avid readers could be identified by the fresh ink stains on their fingers from hot off the press newspapers. News was not carved in stone; it was cast in lead, hot type. News hounds captured the facts on the backs of envelopes with stubby pencils. Walking into newsrooms on deadline was like entering a cacophonous tornado. It appeared as pandemonium, the constant crackle of teletypes added world news to reporters’ scribbled notes. Bells rang, typewriters rattled, editors shouted and processed information from backs of envelopes to hot type composing rooms. Presses roared in the basement and the buildings shook, this was news. From first editions to five star finals, with the sometimes extras, this was news.
Newspapers were the catalysis that made America. Reporters reported facts, ideas and words of the great. The people read, pondered, discussed and acted. Politicians studied voices of competing newspapers and crafted policies and leadership rolls.
In the post war era of television readers began to slip away to TV news as entertainment. Americans forgot how to read. Sound bites replaced incisive articles. Reporters no longer reported news they became journalists who were the news. Today without video there is no story. For great TV news no truth is required, keep talking, let there be no dead air. Speculate on speculation, but keep talking whether the words make sense or not. Social media with even less reliability is replacing TV news as the public’s source of information. Social media is great for inciting mobs but serves poorly as a reliable source of information.
Assaulted by electronic media, bad management and increasingly illiterate publics, American NEWSPAPERS are shrinking in size as well as readership until they will forever disappear. Future America will step back from its downward slippery slope and reach for a newspaper for explanations and reassurance. It will find a need for more than 25 words sound bites and its newspapers will be gone. Before it is to late Americans must slow down, relearn to read and think. The current social media trend as a purveyor of news is another flawed American model the world must not follow.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment