Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

In Tuesday’s edition of The New York Times, Kevin J. Martin, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, had an opinion piece entitled “The Daily Show.” And no, the essay’s not about Jon Stewart’s satirical talk show. Rather it is yet another plea for the preservation of newspapers (which just happens to appear in — wait for it — a newspaper; that being said, I found it and read it online). Martin begins by painting the usual bleak picture of past and recent developments, beginning with, “In many towns and cities, the newspaper is an endangered species. At least 300 daily papers have stopped publishing over the past 30 years. Those newspapers that have survived are struggling financially. Newspaper circulation has declined steadily for more than 10 years. Average daily circulation is down 2.6 percent in the last six months alone.” Martin then concedes that newspapers are seen as not only old-fashioned, but seem increasingly anachronistic, stating that “nearly one-third of all Americans regularly receive news through the Internet.”

But Martin — as have many others — sees all of this as a bad thing and not a good thing (presumably he’s going into Lorax mode here and speaking for the newspapers, for the newspapers — like the trees they used to be — have no tongue). For instance, here are the stakes as he sees them:

If we don’t act to improve the health of the newspaper industry, we will see newspapers wither and die. Without newspapers, we would be less informed about our communities and have fewer outlets for the expression of independent thinking and a diversity of viewpoints. The challenge is to restore the viability of newspapers while preserving the core values of a diversity of voices and a commitment to localism in the media marketplace.

Martin’s thesis in the above is ridiculous; he seems to put all newspapers on equal moral and intellectual ground. Indeed, he seems to state that any old newspaper is a good thing. What about tabloids like The New York Post? I would argue that the Internet keeps us just as, if not more, informed about our communities. For instance, I live in Hoboken, and the website Hoboken 411 is always a great source of information for what’s happening in our small town. When there was a water main break a couple of months ago, this website gave us minute-by-minute coverage — supplied by people who lived in the city — of who had water and where they had it. By the time any local newspapers got around to reporting the incident (on either their website or their print edition), the water main problem had been fixed.

And in terms of newspapers being an “outlet for the expression of independent thinking and a diversity of viewpoints,” this is also ridiculous. The blogosphere — in just the past couple of years — has done more for “independent thinking” than newspapers have done in the last hundred years. Because, in reality, the “diversity of viewpoints” you get in The New York Times is strictly limited to the writers the Times has on the payroll (and of course the occasional contributor, such as Martin). So what Martin’s saying isn’t too far removed from those at the NBCC who think that the only ones who can deliver criticism are critics. And what Martin really means when he writes about a “diversity of viewpoints” is that we have a choice between Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd, Thomas Friedman or Paul Krugman. Talk about diversity!

But of course, since Martin is chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, his piece really isn’t about newspapers but is instead more about how certain laws pertaining to media ownership should be changed. This is Martin’s greatest miscalculation of them all; he still thinks that news and information is in the hands of the big media providers. Has he seen Digg or Reddit? Does he know that a million friends on Myspace can turn into a show on MTV, or a Youtube rant about Britney Spears can turn into a development deal? The days when the FCC could mandate change by rearranging the flow of the mainstream media is long past; because while the big guys fiddle with the aqueducts up in the air, the rest of us are rushing by in a raging river down below.