George Washington, in retirement at Mount Vernon, subscribed to ten of them. One of his biographers, Joseph Ellis, shares this fact as an indication of how important newspapers were to the first president.
Several generations later, Abraham Lincoln was an avid reader of newspapers. Like other public figures of the time, he would seize on these publications for reports of what was going on both locally and in the country at large.
Doris Kearns Goodwin, in her recent historical masterpiece Team of Rivals, underscores the importance of newspapers to Lincoln and his fellow citizens.
As the son of a life-long journalist, I became addicted at an early age to reading newspapers, a habit that has lasted to the present. In particular, I recall reading with fascination each day the paper for which my father worked, the Boston Post, with its accounts of the great events of my young life. In particular, my teenage years were filled with vivid accounts of the fighting in both the European and the Pacific theaters of World War II.
Occasionally during these years, my father gave me tours through the Post, where in his office I met his fellow journalists and, down below, was awed by the giant presses spewing forth the day’s papers.
When in college, I served one summer as a copy boy at the Boston Globe, then a sleepy publication housed on Washington Street’s Newspaper Row. There I saw for myself up close the workings of a large newsgathering organization with all of its traditions and its technology.
Of course, I was on a low rung of the journalistic ladder. Mostly I picked up copy from the editors’ desk, folded it, and stuffed it into a metal tube, and then sent it on its pneumatic way to the composing room.
In those days when big cities typically had half a dozen major papers, I could not have imagined the shrinking that has reduced them to only one or two in most cities across America.
My attachment to newspapers, however, is not merely sentimental. Instead, I regard them as essential to society and its needs.
In my later years, I feel less troubled by the decline of many big-city newspapers than by the habits of many non-newspaper reading Americans, especially the young. Of course, I am aware of many who read news online, but often this material is far less informative, reliable, and incisive than newspapers.
Even students at intellectually demanding colleges and universities are often not well informed about their own country and the wider world. I meet some who have no clear information about matters of great domestic and international import. This condition may, I fear, become habitual, lasting well beyond their student days.
This bothers me because of my conviction that the well-being of our national community depends to a large extent upon citizens being aware of the actions taken by various levels of government in our name. Unless we take steps to keep informed, we can easily be manipulated and our real interests ignored.
Last spring, John S. Carroll, formerly editor of the Los Angeles Times, gave a talk reprinted under the title “What Will Become of Newspapers?” Speaking to fellow editors from across the country, Carroll asked a series of questions about the current journalistic situation and prospects for the future.
One of the questions he posed was: “If newspapers disappear, should the public care?” By pointing to the central function of newspapers his answer goes to the heart of the matter: “This is our role: Newspapers dig up the news. Others repackage it.”
As Carroll observes, search engines on the web have no staffs of reporters; neither do blogs. He estimates that 80 percent of America’s news “originates in newspapers.”
In keeping us informed, newspapers continue to be essential. Even when television, the Internet, and other media provide information, they commonly fail to present enough background to give us the knowledge we need.
Newspapers, at their best, also offer reasoned analysis of events that we ought to know something about. Issues on the national and international level ─illegal immigration, the minimum wage, fundamental changes in Social Security, the wars in Iraq and the Middle East, allowing India technical assistance for nuclear weaponry─demand reliable information and evaluation.
On the state and local level, we citizens need to know about many other issues─ public transportation and the condition of our public school systems, to mention only two. To me, community newspapers like this one serve an indispensable purpose. We need to know and, so far as possible, to understand what is going on.
Carroll urges his editor colleagues to take action: “It is important for us to explain to the public why journalism─real journalism practiced in good faith─is absolutely essential to a self-governing nation.” Sharing this belief, I continue to hope for more people to gain this insight.
Richard Griffin