Musing About Newspapers

I might have mentioned before that when I think of my college journalism classes, I feel quite old. We actually set newspaper type with little metal letters lined up on wooden trays. When we wanted to make a headline we had to count how many spaces we had and think up a headline that matched the space.

It's a sobering thought to think how frightfully old-fashioned all that sounds. And I'm not THAT old, really. But as always the world turns and now there's a whole new way to think about newspapers, that they may soon be gone.

I remember well the mastheads of some of the famous papers, my favorite of which was the Altanta Journal's poetic "Covers Dixie Like the Dew." I could just picture that. In my journalism classes, we spoke of certain newspapers with awe.

For years now, morning and afternoon newspapers have combined, newspapers have become thinner, and it's unusual to see a newspaper home-delivered to a front yard instead of unusual not to.

What has me thinking of all this is a Newsweek article "My Turn" written by Barry Bingham's daughter. The Bingham family for years owned the Louisville Courier-Journal, one of those awe-inspiring newspapers. Emily Bingham wrote that in the early '80's, "my father aniticpated the coming era of electronic news, and he was genuinely excited about it. He believed newspapers could save themselves from extinction--but only if they adapted early and intelligently to new technology."

She went on to say that other newspaper people of the time just didn't want to hear what her father had to say about changes to come but that time has proven him correct.

There is some concern that the press holds government and people accountable in ways that no one else does. Newspaper reporters still uncover stories that would have gone untold in ways that television reporters probably do not simply because their format is different. If newspapers become extinct, our society would miss that accountability role, and the loss would be huge. Perhaps the news magazines will assume that role.

I wonder sometimes about USA Today - is there a time coming, and soon, when people think of USA/today when they think of a hold-in-your-hands newspaper?

I'm not going anywhere with this musing, not really. I have no way to wrap this up. I'm just musing, thinking "out loud."