The Martlet

It was a tradition in our house. My dad would sit in his comfy armchair after work, cup of tea ready, and proceed to laboriously work through that day’s Globe and Mail.

Yes, it was a paper newspaper that my dad was perusing, that same once beloved and indispensible print publication whose slow demise we may now be witnessing.

Is the traditional newspaper, which leaves an ink residue on the fingers, becoming an archaic phenomenon? Are newspapers a relic of the past, or is it possible that we are not quite through with old-fashioned newspapers just yet?

Unquestionably, it has been a grim 2009 for the embattled industry. Seattle’s Post-Intelligencer recently succumbed, now to be found only in its online incarnation. The venerable Boston Globe has been granted a tenuous reprieve, its very existence having been in doubt due to financial challenges and labour relations issues.

Meanwhile, as if right on cue, The Tucson Citizen, the oldest newspaper in the Grand Canyon State, crashed and burned. It was the publication which reported the famed gunfight at the OK Corral.

As if all that weren’t enough, back here on the island, our own Times Colonist has announced the cessation of paper publication on Mondays.

Profound change in the world of print journalism is leaving a battlefield strewn with casualties.

Let’s play devil’s advocate for a moment, though. Who cares if the NYT, the G&M, Le Figaro, or The Daily Telegraph go under — aren’t they essentially elitist pillars of the establishment anyway?

And what about the hypothetical demise of publications with a long tradition of social activism (say, The Guardian or The Nation) — so what if regional or locally-based newspapers drop off the scene? Certainly we can do just fine without them. There is always local TV news, isn’t there?

But it wasn’t the advent of TV news programs that killed newspapers, it took something more formidable: the Internet.

Newspapers and magazines were quick to establish a web presence, which realized the potential for expanded readership numbers and a means of enhancing links with current subscribers and the local community.

However, online newspapers provide fast access to news. Fewer people these days are willing to rely exclusively on paper newspapers when the most up to date news is there on the web 24/7.

Probably the biggest payload to be launched at paper newspapers comes from the Google News empire — a vast, ever-changing, virtually unlimited supply of news from a myriad of sources. Google and its imitators cull and amass news, opinion and information from newspaper websites worldwide, TV news sites, agencies such as Reuters, AP, CP, legions of news-oriented blogs, and just about anywhere news items are to be found on the web.

With that sort of competition, what sort of a chance do paper newspapers have?

People hungering for news can skip Google’s impressive search engines and go directly to a well known news blogs such as Slate, The Huffington Post, and The Drudge Report. Multitudes of other news options exist in the blogosphere, some put together by professional journalists, others by just about anybody.

And let’s not leave out YouTube, where much news is found, though not the genre of news my dad used to read leafing through the paper.

So, what is so bad about this ready access to a staggering quantity of news, opinions and information? There now exists the option of seeking out news on a specific topic without waiting for the local paper to do a story on it.

Personally, I prefer to wait.

Print newspapers are easier on the eyes than a computer screen.There is a permanence about newspapers, unlike the fleeting words and images on our screens. Leafing through the paper, folding it, setting it down — this is a ritual for many of us, and not just for those of an older generation.

And as even the most avid proponents of digitized news would have to concede, there is such a thing as information overload. Indeed, so vast is the ocean of information available on the web that we can find ourselves sinking in a veritable sea of facts.

Determining the credibility (or lack thereof) in news blogs can be something of a challenge. Even a brief foray into the news blogosphere uncovers websites that are shallow, poorly written, improperly sourced, or just plain silly. How can you determine if these blogs are credible?

Dedicated staff at print newspapers work diligently to put together publications with depth, accuracy, responsibility, gravitas, ethics and integrity. I would rather read the product of their labours than undertake the tedious task each day of scanning through the morass of countless articles on Google News, blogs, postings, Wikipedia, user-generated reviews and so on.

News blogs may also be guilty of sloppy reporting. Such is also the case at some newspapers, but the latter, at least, are bound by a system of checks and balances lacking in the blogosphere.

Newspapers and their editorial staff serve as valuable and indispensible intermediaries who ensure the credibility of sources and verification of facts while maintaining a sense of civic responsibility. A newspaper has a certain tone, tenor and cohesiveness, along with editorial policies which become familiar to its loyal readership.

World-class newspapers, those with a long and storied tradition, possess a certain aura, a stature, a greatness. Can the torch be taken up by all those sophomoric blogs and e-zines? That seems doubtful.

Somehow, a news organization which exists only as a website does not seem up to the task.

A newspaper sitting on the coffee tables of the nation represents the power of the press. A digitized newspaper becomes just another website.

One cannot place an online newspaper on a coffee table. Nor would President Truman have been able to hold up the famous “Dewey Defeats Truman” issue of The Chicago Tribune were that publication only published in cyberspace.

There is something reassuring and comforting to me to hold a paper in my hands. Or to reminisce about my dad, sitting in his favourite chair, calmly leafing through that day’s newspaper.