Most communicators lament the death of
newspapers—partly, I think, because we see them as holding pens for our
professional competition. But mostly because we see more communication as
better, and we understand that newspapers help make communities communities.
But some newspapers have gotten so bad—especially the local
newspapers owned by chains like Cox Communications—that the harm they do might
be greater than the good.
Consider the Middletown
Journal, which I’m reading this Sunday morning. The lead story is about a coke oven facility that threatens this southeastern Ohio town's environment but offers its last best economic lifeline; the headline is "SunCoke debate: Jobs vs. air."
In a community faced with choices like that, I guess you shouldn't be surprised to find the local newspaper's editorial page to be filled with denial, paranoia and hatred:
Denial. There’s
an editorial by Middletown Park Board chairman Merrell Wood, responding angrily
to Forbes magazine’s recent ranking of the town as the 10th “fastest
dying” community in the U.S. Failing to acknowledge the Forbes’ statistics
showing vast poverty of both economics and education here, Wood lists a bunch
of “good” things about Middletown. Included are “The Great Miami River,” and
“The Middletown Journal.” A much shorter list of bad things includes, “Some
citizens’ perception that our city’s glass is half empty.” The city’s glass is
all over the fucking floor in a million pieces. And yet the local paper prints
the fatuous ramblings of this local booster who would rather pretend, as he puts it,
“Middletown … might just find ourselves in the right place at the right time,
with the right mix of resources to leave these difficult times behind.”
Paranoia. The Journal runs the wacked-out
syndicated columnist Cal Thomas, who this morning ever so reluctantly writes that he is “starting to
believe in the possibility of a one-world government” that should be
“vigorously opposed if America, as we know it, is to be preserved.”
Hatred. And then
there’s the “Sound Off” section, a common feature of small-town
papers that allows readers to call in and leave anonymous rants that are then
printed verbatim. “Hey, I was just reading where they were organizing a ‘Day
Without a Gay’ on Wednesday, Dec. 10,” says one anonymous Middletonian in this
morning’s paper. “I think this is absolutely a wonderful idea. I just wish they
could have 365 of them in a year’s time.”
I’m not going to say I wish this newspaper would cease publication. I
believe even the most banal newspaper represents a tangible symbol of a community and
when a paper disappears the community, to some important extent, also
disappears.
But some communities may be too far gone, and pandering to
their brokenhearted, cynical and hopeless citizens may not be worth anyone’s
while.
I’ve seen companies in this condition. But companies can file
Chapter 11. What can communities do?