Blank pages = blank minds, but will that sway anybody to subscribe?

The Chicago Sun-Times on Monday tried to make a huge, sweeping statement – one of those “moments of awe” meant to inspire a deep thought within us.

Were you swayed?

They published a newspaper with a blank front page. It’s supposed to be symbolic of the quality of information we’d get if there were no newspapers being published at all.

AS IN THERE would be no stories whatsoever if we didn’t have newspapers with their staffs to actually report them. So, we’re supposed to conclude, we need to do whatever is necessary to ensure the continued survival of newspapers.

Of course, this grand statement is part of a larger gimmick. The Sun-Times’ website (at www.chicago.suntimes.com) wants to alter itself so that people can no longer just go there and expect to get the full content of the newspaper unless they have some sort of subscription.

They’d probably like it if people would take the full package that gives them a copy of the daily paper, along with full access to the website. Although they’ll also be happy if people take the digital access, by which people pay a lesser fee for the right to read anything on the website that they wish.

According to the Sun-Times’ own promotional copy, it is such a low subscription rate to do that. It amounts to “less than 25 cents a day.”

WHICH IS MY mind is a magic number of sorts – I’m old enough to remember back to when daily newspapers in Chicago cost a quarter each. That 25 cents would get you the whole paper back then, along with all the advertising supplements that were stuffed in it that supposedly had such value in-and-of-themselves that you’d save money far beyond the quarter you shelled out.

Did you "read all about it" on Waffle House?

Perhaps you can make an older generation feel like the price is returning to the golden days of old, rather than the current cost of $1 per day that a Sun-Times costs (or $2 on Sunday, but with the physical product scaled back to the point where it doesn’t have the “feel” of a traditional Sunday edition).

But a part of me is skeptical the message will take.

I have often wondered if it is going to take the outright demise of several newspapers and the loss of their content before people realize just how serious the loss will be.

I KNOW TOO many people who are foolish enough to think that television broadcasts or the Internet have somehow replaced newspapers in terms of providing information. They really haven’t.

Because if you take a serious look at the content those entities are providing, all too often they remain nothing more than retransmissions of what was first in the local paper.

The local TV news is just following up on the stories that were already in the paper, and the assorted websites are merely publishing the newspaper stories – or more accurately rewriting them in ways to try to make them appear to be their own content.

The original source

I got a subtle reminder of that fact in a story I wrote last week for the Post-Tribune newspaper of Northwest Indiana. Improvements that the Gary South Shore RailCats baseball team will have made to their stadium. Or, to be more honest, improvements that Gary municipal government will make for the ball club.

A WEBSITE, BALLPARK Digest, which covers the professional sports industry, did its own story. Which, if you read it realistically, was just a cheap rewrite of what I had did. At least they were honest enough to attribute the work to the Post-Tribune.

This kind of rewrite is all-too-common. Which is why I find it laughable when people say they don’t read the Sun-Times or Tribune anymore. But then you learn they’re getting those papers’ stories off assorted websites.

I don’t know what the future of the news-gathering business is, to tell you the truth. Only that I fear many of us are going to be a lot-less-well-informed because of the changes.

And by then, it will be far too late to do anything about it.

  -30-

News media too trivial to be liberal; the reminisces of a reporter-type person

I get noble ideas occasionally about how being a reporter-type person is my contribution to society, but some of the modern-day world realities make me contemplate that what I do is spread triviality instead.

I still own one, although I can't recall last time I used it

I can’t help but reflect upon what has become of the newsgathering business – and not just because some dink voters these days enjoy the idea their newly-elected congressman committed assault on a British newspaperman.

TOO MANY NEWS people spend too much of their time trying to recycle the stories they’ve already reported into so many venues so as to draw attention to our original published reports. It takes time away from finding new news stories.

Yet I suspect that too many of the people who think they’re being informed by what appears on their social media accounts never bother to go beyond the dinky 140-character blurbs (if they use Twitter) or pithy single-sentence (if on Facebook) accounts to see the real story. It’s no wonder the masses are clueless.

It can be a humbling experience to think that the 1,100-word story I wrote recently out of Gary, Ind., for the Post-Tribune will only capture the public attention for about 20 words – and no more.

It causes a trivialization of the information we gather, which is what leads me to say that the concept of a “liberal” media really is a myth. We have a “trivial” media, with too much space taken up by fluff that fills column inches.

WHICH MAY BE why readership is down, publications shrink to offer less space and the quality of the product declines even further. An endless cycle – even though the ideologues amongst us want to believe it’s because we don’t pander to their narrow thought.

Yet still, I have to confess to feeling the urge to be a reporter-type person. In some ways, the desire to be the eyes and ears of the community is all the more important now in this hyper-partisan era than it was that day some three decades ago that I walked across a stage and was handed a college diploma.

My strongest memory from that day (aside from thinking that our commencement speaker was deadly dull and that it rained during part of the outdoor ceremony) was that I felt pleased in knowing that I had a job interview scheduled for later that week.

Still a comforting sensation

As things turned out, that newspaper in suburban Chicago Heights didn’t think I was totally useless and wound up putting me to work beginning Monday.

THE 30-YEAR ANNIVERSARY of which occurred this week. My first news assignment was covering a plan commission hearing in Orland Park held entirely in executive session (meaning I sat outside while officials met privately) and I had to try to decipher what was taking place inside.

Since then, I’ve had my share of interesting (and historically-significant) moments. But much has changed since the days when Ronald Reagan and Harold Washington were actual living beings, rather than pseudo-iconic figures to differing segments of our society (including the ones most upset we don’t cater exclusively to their ideological beliefs).

For one thing, that Chicago Heights newspaper is no more. Neither is the old City News Bureau for whom I once toiled. United Press International for whom a part of me will always think myself tied still exists in some form, but the old bureaus in Chicago and Springfield, Ill., where I worked are no more.

In fact, I was the one who had to pack up the belongings of that latter bureau when it closed. It’s enough to make me feel like a professional “kiss of death” to news organizations. Perhaps I should keep quiet about it, lest my current employer get paranoid about my potential influence and give me yet another job layoff.

A long-lost image we'd like to keep of ourselves

ALTHOUGH IF I think of the equipment I have used throughout the years, it seems like a collection of antique junk – although I must confess to still owning a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100 computer. The famed “Trash 80” that a generation of reporters relied upon to file copy – which can’t do anywhere near what my laptop can these days.

I recall when a “fax” machine was a newsroom novelty and it was considered a revolutionary act that organizations could instantly send us statements or other detailed information. Honestly, I can’t even remember the last time I got a fax. And I’m sure that when I did, it was for something stupid and trivial.

I also recall the habit of always scanning a room for the nearest payphone in case I had to make a quickie call. Actually, I still do that, even though more and more there are no payphones anywhere to be used.

But the ultimate change may be that I actually wrote my first stories on typewriters, whereas one of my contemporary (and about two-decades younger) news colleagues admitted recently to never having touched a typewriter in her life.

IT’S ENOUGH TO make me feel antique. Particularly since some people think these changing tools ARE the significance of the news business, instead of merely new toys to “play” with on the job. As though I endured all that prep time early in life just so I could talk to anonymous schmoes what they think of the latest mindless ramblings of our political geeks.

Even more so than the fact I remember who were Carmen Fanzone and Harry Chappas, while most people merely draw a blank in their eyes at the mention of the one-time infielders who bobbled many a ball on both sides of Chicago but were entertaining in their own unique ways.

  -30-