Anyone who loves newspapers will want to take a look at this. It's written by Paul Steiger, and it appeared on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, one of this country's greatest newspapers -- I say that even though I'm clearly not a conservative.
Steiger, who worked for many years at the Journal, writes lovingly about an industry that is struggling. He's about to embark on a new veture at the nonprofit ProPublica, which is funded primarily by Herbert and Marion Sandler, who made billions from the sale of Golden West Financial. But he also recognizes that journalism is at a transition point.
I wasn't aware of the state of the newspaper industry fifty-some years ago. He describes a moment where a newspaper photographer kept a dead bird in his car to use as a prop for photos. "The bird," he writes, "was for feature shots on holidays like Memorial Day. He'd perch it on a gravestone or tree limb in a veterans' cemetery to get the right mood. Nowadays such a trick would get him fired, but in the 1950s, this guy said, there was no time to wait for a live bird to flutter into the frame."
I spent ten years working as a reporter for a trade journal. There are times when working there resembled a scene from The Office, but I enjoyed it for the most part. The "non-most" part, however, included dealing with dwindling advertising dollars and moments when I recognized that my paycheck was supplied by advertisers that I wanted little to do with.
I encourage anyone with an interest in the newspaper industry and the communication of important information to average Americans -- and anyone, really -- to read or at least skim Steiger's article. The United States needs a strong cadre of journalists who aren't afraid that their jobs will evaporate like water on Mars. The kids coming out of college know this already. Let's do more than just hope there are readers for them when they're ready.
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