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The Other Side column. Fairfield Daily Republic.

There's still a place for newspapers

By Kelvin Wade | | March 26, 2009 16:37

Newspapers are taking a beating. Denver's Rocky Mountain News bit the dust after being published since 1859. The Seattle Post Intelligencer stopped printing and went to Web only. The San Francisco Chronicle has reportedly lost 5.5 percent of its circulation last year and is losing $1 million a week, as is the Boston Globe.

Newspapers are falling victim to falling ad revenue and stiff competition from the Internet.

While I was interested in writing as far back as I can remember, I wasn't always interested in newspapers. I sometimes helped my brother Orvis with his Virginian-Pilot paper route when we lived in Norfolk, VA. I may have tossed it but I didn't read it.

I didn't really become hooked on newspapers until my eighth grade journalism class at Grange where my teacher, Mr. Brown, would read us Herb Caen's column in the Chronicle. Then I was fortunate to write our school's newspaper column in the Daily Republic.

I learned that a local paper is one of the things that helps bind a community together. Whether it's coverage of schools, crime or sports, community papers have an important role to play. And who else but your local paper can keep your local elected officials honest? Where would political transparency be without the fourth estate?

Many readers are increasingly turning to the Internet for news. It's a great resource. The problem comes when one gets their news from shady Web sites of dubious quality. A newspaper that has been around for 100 years has the stature and reputation that gives it the edge over a 2-year-old old blog.

There are many online journalists and pseudo-journalists these days who have never seen a single word they've written in actual print. While newspapers are often derided for not being as dynamic as online sources, the permanence of having one's words put in hard copy, to my mind, implies that what you're reading is more thoroughly sourced and thought out than a Web page where incorrect items can be quickly deleted.

But ad revenues are down by a quarter industrywide, thanks to a collapse in real estate ads and the loss of classified ads to sites such as Craigslist.

Change is in the air and papers should've seen it coming.

Record stores that many of us grew up patronizing have been squeezed out of existence by Walmart and digital downloads. The US Postal Service is asking for a bailout because they've been devastated by e-mail, online billing, spam and instant messaging. Amazon's Kindle, the new Kindle reader app for the Apple iPhone and audiofiles will put the squeeze on books.

Even with this dramatic change, newspapers will not go the way of the dinosaur. Newspapers will survive in some form.

Those of us who love newspapers will always be nostalgic about slipping the rubber band off a paper and digesting it with the morning coffee. It's not the same reading the news off your iPhone. You're not going to find a Kindle sitting on the coffee table in your doctor's waiting room and no one has figured out how to hand a stranger the digital sports section of the paper you're reading on your phone.

News will survive. Peace.

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From the Burn in Hell Dept.

Tommy J. Thompson was convicted this week of the murder of 26 year old Taneka Talley. Thompson walked into the Fairfield Dollar Tree store three years ago and within 40 seconds had stabbed Talley to death. His motivation? She was black.

This miserable waste of a human body now faces 51 years to life in prison for his despicable crime.

The case received even more media attention when Dollar Tree's insurer refused to pay a workers comp claim because the crime was racially motivated. Dollar Tree bowed to public pressure and settled with Talley's family.

This world would be a much better place if some people had never been born. Which brings us to Lovelle Mixon....

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