November 10, 2009
It may not be the Internet that's killing newspapers. Maybe it's us.
That's one of many salient points that Richard Rodriguez makes in a long, somewhat rambling but extraordinarily compelling article in the November issue of Harper's Magazine. Unfortunately, the full text of "Final Edition, Twilight of the American Newspaper" is not available online so I can't link to it; you'll have to go to your nearest newsstand to pick up a copy. (Take that, new media!)
It's worth every penny of the six dollars and ninety-five cents.
Another thoughtful point: The newspaper is the city and the city is the newspaper. Rodriguez tells the story of the rise and fall of the San Francisco Chronicle to elegantly illustrate this.
Rodriguez's article reminded me of my afternoons as a teen lugging a bag full of 100-plus copies of the Tarrytown Daily News (long ago subsumed into a Gannett regional newspaper) to deliver faithfully to the faithful customers on my route. I hadn't thought about that in a long time.
The article also helped me make a connection about myself that I hadn't before. I grew up delivering newspapers and when I grew up, I worked to influence them.
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