Newspapers
all over the country are in trouble. In our slavish desire for speed,
we consume news via social media. Not because it's more in-depth or
more accurate, but because it's faster.
It's
also unvetted. Unconsidered. Full of errors. And reliant on
questionable sources. But yes, it is faster.
Playing
the dragging-my-heels Luddite while the rest of the world rockets off into supersonic cyberspace is an act fraught with
futility. I am not going to change a thing. The world is going to do
what the world is going to do.
Sigh.
Along
with internal combustion engines, record stores, grilling with
charcoal, movie theaters and book stores, newspapers face a
questionable future. Those that haven't already merged or
consolidated are being devoured by what I like to refer to as vulture
capitalists.
Like
the Chicago Tribune, currently being ingested by Alden Global
Capital.
Armed
with vast reserves of cash, funds like Alden swoop in, buy a
controlling interest and proceed to dismantle its target like car
thieves in a chop shop. They sell off the components with the
expectation the ala carte sale will generate more revenue than a
bundled one.
It
its wake are the employees—usually left unemployed with little in
the way of severance or pensions.
I'm
no businessman, but I believe had the Tribune not gone public
and consequently made itself vulnerable to this parasite, it
would have survived. It was a formidable newspaper with a devoted
readership.
Not
so long ago, it would take me a morning and a good part of the
afternoon to plow through the Sunday edition. It was stuffed with
local and international news of every stripe, reported by a robust
network of bureaus and correspondents stationed all over the world.
Music,
art, film, books, sports, politics, transportation, business and any
kind of conceivable feature all received similar attention. It was
the world at your fingertips, strained through a now-irrelevant
filter of fact-checking and confirmation.
An
old saw of journalism went “If your mother says she loves you,
check it out.” You know—like it was going to be on Fox News or
social media or something. Newspapers like the Tribune were a
gathering place, a shared link between people. They provided a sense
of community.
In
their place is a hopelessly fragmented media landscape playing to
impossibly divergent interests. We have retreated into
hyper-demographic social media bubbles which insist anyone who
doesn't fit the profile is not to be trusted.
To many of you I'm just a tiresome old man bemoaning the loss of
another cultural touchstone. But I'm thinking it's highly probable I'm correct about the coarse and merciless future we're building, and what role this event plays in it.
So. John Kass, Dahleen Glanton, Heidi Stevens, Mary Schmich and Eric Zorn
are gone. Alden Global Capital has paid them to go away. On the
surface? A dent in a local newspaper's appeal. But
taking the longer view, it is another step forward in our inevitable
construction of the Tower of Babel.
It
is so very, very sad. But at least Alden Global Capital will get rich(er).
And isn't that
we're all about?
