Feeding the Beast

First in a series of articles educating the public about the media. 

Imagine a world without newspapers. Every day another media outlet cuts their print counterpart to go strictly digital. And every media outlet reports a steady decline in revenue. Yet it’s hard to imagine a world without newspapers. There would be fewer materials to stuff broken windows and insulate walls. Nothing would be left behind to read on the bus. You couldn’t paint your home without drop cloths. What would people do in the reading room at the library? How would you discipline a dog or a cat, potty train a puppy, or swat an annoying house fly? Crumple a newspaper into a ball and it’s still the best way to clean windows. Without newspaper, there would be fewer hoarders, or rather fewer things to hoard. In a pinch, newspapers can be used as sterile towels because they are often bacteria free, and can be the landing pad to birth a baby, collect shavings from finger nails, or trash corn husks. Losing the option to get news in print would leave us all in a bind.

The Newspaper Association of America recently changed its name to the News Media Alliance to accommodate all of the new media outlets that do not have a print counterpart. These media darlings have no news in print: the Skimm, Buzz Feed or the Huffington Post.

And yet a world without newspapers is unthinkable.  Even when the Comedian John Oliver makes a very funny video alleging the death of journalism, he admits the cycle of news reporting is an organic process. Digital, social media, Broadcast (TV, Cable and Radio), all of these outlets are dependent on “All the news that’s fit to print,” to feed the beast. Not to tout the New York Times as a sole trusted news authority, there are many others, including notable magazines,  The Economist, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Nation.

Years ago, with the advent of Microsoft, Bill Gates famously proclaimed that the pervasive use of desktop computers would replace paper in the office. The reality is digital books and magazines, online news sites, social media and apps are not eliminating news in print any more than computers eliminated the glut of paper in the office.  Today, digital and print live together in a messy cohabitation that has created a culture of clutter where we don’t know what to read first, or how we can cram all that reading in, in one day, or even over the course of a lifetime.

We can look forward to a blended news reality where the cycle of news reporting needs to have as many touch points as possible to reach a beast that is diverse, fickle and composed of many different types of intelligence. Media needs to reach all people.  One day, the magazine I started in 2012, will be in print. PR for People “The Connector” will reach those people who need to hold it in their hands. Even if it lands under a bird cage, it will have fed the beast.