Double-check origin of your news
Though only the most attentive readers might have noticed this news event last week, it's something that weighed heavily on the hearts of journalists.
The Seattle Post Intelligencer, a 146-year-old paper, ceased its print edition to become an Internet only product. A slim percentage of the staff will continue to work there.
The others are off to seek jobs, likely outside newspaper journalism because few, if any, newspapers are hiring at this point. The Seattle P-I, along with the San Francisco Chronicle, another paper in danger, is owned by Hearst Corp., the same company that owns The Enterprise. Seattle's history-making move to become the country's largest online-only paper combined with questions about the future of the San Francisco paper and a couple of other events to bring the reality of journalism in America into sharp focus.
* One of those events was Beaumont's West Brook High
School's annual career day. It's an event that Enterprise staff members have participated in multiple times through the years. This year it was just me, before two classes of students, whom I was supposed to encourage to think about entering the field of newspaper journalism. Instead I gave them some pretty honest assessments, along with some general encouragement that included the thought that "Learning how to express yourself via the written word will serve you well in any career you pursue."
I also shared with them a Leonard Pitts column that appeared in The Enterprise last Thursday under the headline, "Crooks wouldn't mind break from newspapers." His point was newspapers across the country have played important roles in holding public officials accountable for their actions.
He wrote, in part: "No, only the local paper performs the critical function of holding accountable the mayor, the governor, the local magnates and potentates, for how they spend your money, run your institutions, validate or violate your trust. If newspapers go, no other entity will have the wherewithal to do that."
If that's whetted your appetite and you missed the print version of his column, you can read it at: www.miamiherald.com/living/columnists/le onardpitts/story/955386.html
* Pitts also referenced the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, which conducted a survey that produced some scary numbers. The most frightening was that 62 percent of respondents said if their local newspaper disappeared they would miss it very little or not at all.
A Colorado town recently discovered, the hard way, that they did miss their local paper.
When the Carbondale Valley Journal ceased publication after 34 years of being the town's only newspaper, residents missed the listings of deaths, births, community developments and high school sports scores.
The newspaper's founder, Rebecca Young, who sold it in 1980, searched out like-minded residents to support the paper. She and six others reestablished it as the nonprofit Sopris Sun, operated by a mostly volunteer staff.
"It just beat the dickens out of sitting around whining that our paper was dead," Young said.
* For readers who are fine with simply finding their news on a Web site -- any Web site, keep in mind, when and if newspapers stop printing, other credible sources such as The Associated Press won't be far behind.
It's unlikely that television and radio stations, which are having their own problems, and Web sites such as AOL, can fully support an organization as large as The Associated Press. When they are gone too who will be your dependable, credible source of news?
When speaking to the West Brook students, I used the example of the circulating text message moving throughout Southeast Texas late last week saying three people were going to be killed in a Wal-Mart parking lot as part of a gang initiation.
Not true. It was a hoax started in Memphis, Tenn. in 2005. BeaumontEnterprise.comreaders knew that before nightfall. Beaumont Enterprise print edition readers had that as part of their news the next morning. My message to the teens was that they need to check the sources of their information, every time. So do adult readers.
The Seattle Post Intelligencer, a 146-year-old paper, ceased its print edition to become an Internet only product. A slim percentage of the staff will continue to work there.
The others are off to seek jobs, likely outside newspaper journalism because few, if any, newspapers are hiring at this point. The Seattle P-I, along with the San Francisco Chronicle, another paper in danger, is owned by Hearst Corp., the same company that owns The Enterprise. Seattle's history-making move to become the country's largest online-only paper combined with questions about the future of the San Francisco paper and a couple of other events to bring the reality of journalism in America into sharp focus.
* One of those events was Beaumont's West Brook High
School's annual career day. It's an event that Enterprise staff members have participated in multiple times through the years. This year it was just me, before two classes of students, whom I was supposed to encourage to think about entering the field of newspaper journalism. Instead I gave them some pretty honest assessments, along with some general encouragement that included the thought that "Learning how to express yourself via the written word will serve you well in any career you pursue."
I also shared with them a Leonard Pitts column that appeared in The Enterprise last Thursday under the headline, "Crooks wouldn't mind break from newspapers." His point was newspapers across the country have played important roles in holding public officials accountable for their actions.
He wrote, in part: "No, only the local paper performs the critical function of holding accountable the mayor, the governor, the local magnates and potentates, for how they spend your money, run your institutions, validate or violate your trust. If newspapers go, no other entity will have the wherewithal to do that."
If that's whetted your appetite and you missed the print version of his column, you can read it at: www.miamiherald.com/living/columnists/le onardpitts/story/955386.html
* Pitts also referenced the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, which conducted a survey that produced some scary numbers. The most frightening was that 62 percent of respondents said if their local newspaper disappeared they would miss it very little or not at all.
A Colorado town recently discovered, the hard way, that they did miss their local paper.
When the Carbondale Valley Journal ceased publication after 34 years of being the town's only newspaper, residents missed the listings of deaths, births, community developments and high school sports scores.
The newspaper's founder, Rebecca Young, who sold it in 1980, searched out like-minded residents to support the paper. She and six others reestablished it as the nonprofit Sopris Sun, operated by a mostly volunteer staff.
"It just beat the dickens out of sitting around whining that our paper was dead," Young said.
* For readers who are fine with simply finding their news on a Web site -- any Web site, keep in mind, when and if newspapers stop printing, other credible sources such as The Associated Press won't be far behind.
It's unlikely that television and radio stations, which are having their own problems, and Web sites such as AOL, can fully support an organization as large as The Associated Press. When they are gone too who will be your dependable, credible source of news?
When speaking to the West Brook students, I used the example of the circulating text message moving throughout Southeast Texas late last week saying three people were going to be killed in a Wal-Mart parking lot as part of a gang initiation.
Not true. It was a hoax started in Memphis, Tenn. in 2005. BeaumontEnterprise.comreaders knew that before nightfall. Beaumont Enterprise print edition readers had that as part of their news the next morning. My message to the teens was that they need to check the sources of their information, every time. So do adult readers.
posted by Sheila Friedeck at 3:44 PM
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