A 30 mile per hour gust of the proverbial wind of change blew though my life this morning with the confirmation that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has stopped publishing in the form of something you don't need a screen of some sort to read.
As a reporter for a well-respected trade publication with an already small staff, my current job over the short to medium term feels somewhat secure. But its hard not to notice that over the longer term I might be a practitioner of a disappearing craft.
Newspapers and, by extension journalists, face a multi-layered challenge. First, an awful lot of newspapers which had historically made money and still make money faced investors who wanted them to make a whole lot more money and who often saddled them with debt as part of various schemes to make that happen. Now, as the economy tanked and extending lines of credit became a lot more difficult, those papers can't meet their notes and have started to fail. That is the near-term challenge.
The bigger, long term challenge, is that the market they are trying to serve has changed. Consider this quote from the story:
David Lonay, 80, a subscriber since 1950, said he'll miss a morning ritual that can't be replaced by a Web-only version.
"The first thing I do every day is get the P-I and read it," Lonay said. "I really feel like an old friend is dying."
God bless Mr. Lonay for his devotion, but he points up the problem. Newspaper readers are aging and they are not being replaced by younger readers; newspapers as papers no longer fit as easily into the ebb and flow of American life - even for those of us who esteem them and rely on them for our living.
For the longest time I got out of the habit of reading The Washington Post or any other daily. Then one day about four months ago a young woman popped up in front of me selling Post subscriptions with a pretty good deal, so I started taking a Sunday paper again. After a few fits and starts with delivery, the paper started coming regularly - but I still don't read it often or consistently. Most weeks it sits reproachfully on a hall chair, mocking my infidelity as well as spendthrift ways in not reading something I have paid to have delivered.
I just lack the time. Maybe it says something about my life these days that I really don't have an hour or more to myself when I could just sit in a comfortable chair and pull out the Sunday post to get brought up on the news. I also lack the interest. By the nature of my professional life, I often feel positively steeped in news - just not from newspapers. Most of the news coverage in the Post comes as old news to me by the time I would read it - though the more in-depth features, editorial and opinion pieces retain their freshness.
What this means for my future is hard to see definitively. A number of authorities have begun to call for newspapers to become non-profits, organs which would seek to make their expenses but get out of the demanding grind of the quarterly earnings statement. I think that ideas has a lot of promise, but I am not sure it will happen quickly enough to save an entire industry.
So, as much as I would hate to do it, I expect I should training and positioning myself to do something else for a living, should it come to that. Maybe something where I could both do whatever it was while still writing about it? I am still thinking on it and open to suggestions, but that is where the wind of change feels like it is blowing these days.....
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