Even though I know it's been financially struggling for a long long time, even way back before I moved to Texas, it still surprised me today to read that the Hearst Corporation is giving the Seattle Post-Intelligencer 60 days to find a buyer.Or else.
The hard copy version of Seattle's oldest paper will be no more. The online version will continue.
A few days ago I read, somewhere, that back in the early 1950s nearly every household in America subscribed to a daily newspaper. And, now, in 2009, only 20% of American households get a daily paper.
At my house, when growing up, we got the daily Skagit Valley Herald and the daily Bellingham Herald. And on Sunday's we got the Sunday Seattle P-I, which is where I learned to like the P-I, with the P-I eventually becoming my daily and the newspaper to which I compare others. Which explains why I was so constantly appalled by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, which always seemed, to me, like a real small town paper, prone to mistakes and Chamber of Commerce type hyperbole that rubbed me the wrong way.
I know the drop in newspaper readership is being blamed on the new media, like cable news and the Internet. But neither is a substitute for a good locally produced newspaper.
Way back when I was in school, and already an avid newspaper reader, it seemed to me that one class a day should consist of reading a newspaper. And then discussing it. I can't think of anything a school could do that would have more meaningful educational value.
Instead, we are slowly becoming an ever larger population of people woefully ignorant about way too much. When the majority of Americans can't tell you when the American Civil War took place, that is scary. We are sliding down a slippery slope where soon the majority of Americans won't be able to tell you who is buried in Grant's Tomb. I fear we may already be at that point.
In Texas.
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