Editor’s note: This commentary is by Howard Fairman, of Putney, a native Vermonter who has loved newspapers ever since he could read them.
“Means must then be found to converse every day without seeing
one another, and to take steps in common without having met.”
— Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy in America, Vol. II, Sect. 2, Chap. 6
[R]ural Vermont is becoming a local-news desert no longer covered by daily newspapers barely able to cover their hometowns.
We no longer need them for national and international news and opinion that we heard, read or watched yesterday on-air or online.
Coverage of statewide news is ensured by competing Burlington broadcast media attracting listeners, viewers and advertisers with their national radio and TV shows, and by online and print weekly Seven Days attracting readers and advertisers in every way.
Newcomer online Vermont Watchdog is among seven state “watchdogs” (with Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) sponsored by the conservative Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity.
Up-and-comer online VTDigger, now employing the most investigative journalists in Vermont, innovatively emulates public radio and television financing by freewill donations and sponsorships while pioneering sharing of full-time journalists with local newspapers.
They all demonstrate that daily newspapers’ decline is not the decline of news and opinion: It is the sacrifice of newsrooms to sustain now unaffordable costs of traditional daily printing and distribution.
Daily newspapers have met their enemy, and it is their traditionalism: The era of printed daily newspapers is ending.
This did not have to happen: HTML (hypertext markup language creating web pages) could have included a two-way hyperlink: Selecting it displays that web page while collecting a small payment for viewing it.
World Wide Web pioneers resisted this idea, ensuring declines and demises of countless magazines and newspapers worldwide (Walter Isaacson: The Innovators, 2014, pp. 419–22).
Newspaper editors uphold standards fundamental to thorough reporting and discussion of public issues leading to democratic decisions by informed citizens.
The World Wide Web Consortium still can implement two-way hyperlinks as an HTML standard — too late to avoid the damage they have wrought by regally depriving publications of their online livelihoods.
Americans have been buying, holding, reading, sharing, clipping and reusing daily newspapers ever since the Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser began publication on Sept. 21, 1784: soon 233 years ago.
Newspaper editors uphold standards fundamental to thorough reporting and discussion of public issues leading to democratic decisions by informed citizens.
Moreover, online newspapers can hyperlink news stories and opinions about them into truly comprehensive past and present coverage of ongoing public issues.
As media visionary Marshall McLuhan observed decades ago, do not wonder what will replace a communications medium: It’s already there; cautioning us, however, that “the medium is the message.”
Personal computers, smartphones and tablets are the medium. The message is news and opinion from any and every source published and available instantly worldwide — but not covering most Vermont towns.
Nominally covered by daily newspapers in Barre-Montpelier, Bennington, Brattleboro and Burlington, Claremont and Lebanon in neighboring New Hampshire, Newport, Rutland, St. Albans and St. Johnsbury, other Vermont towns hope that fewer and fewer staff journalists also can cover their local news attracting local readers.
Time was when newspapers’ stringers covered most Vermont towns with their local knowledge and interest: grassroots journalism now facilitated and enhanced by filing stories and photos online.
Although stringers perhaps could not be paid much, they might do it for their towns and for the experience as aspiring journalists mentored by their editors.
More local news, more local readers and more local payment are essential.
These are some signposts to our way forward. What say you?
