Help keep journalism alive, read your local paper – The Press-Enterprise

By Mae Wagner Marinello

First, thank you for reading this column.

Secondly, I would like to thank the newspaper you are now reading for printing “Inlandia Literary Journeys” and for still being in business.

You see, newspapers have been dying at an alarming rate. According to an article by Mark Stenberg in adweek.com, June 2022, “the U.S. saw the loss of an average of two newspapers per week between late 2019 and May 2022, leaving an estimated 70 million people in places that are already news deserts…”

If this does not alarm you, it should.

Some of these “news deserts” are small rural and semi-rural communities who rely on local newspapers to keep citizens informed. One such community is my hometown, Hettinger, North Dakota, where the Adams County Record has been serving southwestern North Dakota and Northwestern South Dakota since 1907. For more than seven years, I wrote a column for the paper. There have been times when its future looked iffy, and it almost closed its doors.

Tony Bender, a former owner and current columnist for the Adams County Record recently sounded the alarm for small community newspapers. In his “That’s Life” column of Sept. 28, 2023, he said there used to be 300 newspapers in North Dakota — now it is down to 75. He cited a 2018 Bloomberg News report that said “when local newspapers shut their doors, communities lose out… politicos take liberties when it’s nobody’s job to hold them accountable. What the public doesn’t know winds up hurting them…”

That’s true. Newspapers keep an eye on local politicians and policies whether it is a large metropolitan area or a small community. If newspapers don’t hold these politicians and others accountable, who does? How do we know if a local school bond issue should pass? How do we determine the best candidate for our city councils and school boards? How do we know what is happening in our community?

Newspapers used to depend on money from classified advertising and loyal subscribers to keep their papers afloat. Nowadays, there is little need for classified advertising in newspapers as there are free formats such as Craigslist and OfferUp. And, as newspapers have increased the cost of subscriptions, people look for news articles on the internet or simply by scrolling the headlines showing up on their phones.

Bender also decried the use of “shoppers,” ads that take advertising from newspapers, “leaving the work and expense of reporting to newspapers…”

Yes, other forms of media such as Yahoo and Google are aggregators of news, all too often obtaining it from print sources but without the accompanying expenses that print sources face. Newspapers hire reporters, editors, and other employees who may work under labor contracts. Google does not contend with most of the other overhead costs that print media does such as printing, delivering, billing and collecting for subscriptions.

(How I miss the days when the newspaper hit my front step every day and the delivery person came by to collect once a month!)

There are people who still dream of becoming journalists. For many, it is a calling — but where will would-be journalists find jobs? I don’t believe investigative reporters Carl Bernstein and Robert Woodward could exist in today’s newspaper climate. What newspaper could afford to keep them on staff like the Washington Post did when they were investigating the Watergate scandals surrounding President Richard Nixon, scandals that ultimately led to his resignation?

The Press-Enterprise recently reported that the L.A. Times was going to lay off more than 20% of its newsroom — which has since happened. The billionaire owner of the newspaper, Dr. Patrick Soon Shiong, said his paper was losing $30 to $40 million a year. (Sunday, Jan. 28, 2024)

Yes, newspapers have been losing readers to other media for years. First, people began turning to television for their news — but the death knell for newspapers really began with the birth of the internet.

Because of that, younger people have grown up using social media for their news sources. Color me old-fashioned, but I do not trust social media for my news — or the news my grandchildren’s generation consumes. Unfortunately, the internet allows just about anyone with a computer to be a less-than-reliable source of “news.”