Newspapers

I was just listening to the radio and they were talking about John Kerry's proposal to subsidize newspapers.

First of all, newspapers cannot be independant observers if they are subsidized by government.

Second, I come from a small town that rarely ever gets mentioned on the TV news, even for weather. The only ways to get news about the goings-on in my hometown are through gossip and the local weekly newspaper. I have a feeling that the EC Progress will get along fine without John Kerry's handouts. The Progress and other small town newspapers like it could be the cockroaches that survive the nuclear holocaust institutions like the Denver Post are falling victim to.

Third, I do not want to see newspapers go. Studies have shown that people who read the newspaper are more likely to be politically active. Newspapers are able to go into greater depth on stories than the evening news and are therefore more able to disseminate information to the consumer. Watch the news, check the headlines on the internet, be informed about what is going on in the world around you, go to bed, wake up and retrieve the newspaper from your front porch and get a more in-depth view. Just as only snacking on junk food is bad for your diet, so is snacking on news blips bad for your mind. You cannot properly form opinions about things if you do not take the trouble to look at the issues beyond superficial and passing interest.

Fourth, if newspapers go the way of the Dodo, so will crossword puzzles. One of the reasons I picked up the "Daily Universe" almost every day while I attended BYU was to do the crossword puzzle by Will Shortz of New York Times fame. In fact, my affinity for said puzzles is how my husband and I became friends--he was my human German-English dicitonary when I came upon clues that were Greek to me.

Just as the horse and buggy made way for cars and trucks, the newspaper is fast becoming the subject of a Trivial Pursuit question. If print media wants to survive, it needs to embrace the technology that is threatening to run it out of business, not look to the government to uphold an antiquated institution. The impostor "Mad-Eye Moody" said it best when he was giving advice to Harry Potter in "The Goblet of Fire"--"Play to your strengths." The strength of the newspaper is to provide news at a level TV cannot. If you watch the cable news channels, you will notice that they cycle through the same stories every five minutes or so, enabling people who are just tuning in to catch up--news snacking. The real meat of a story is cut out. That is where newspapers come in. True it is delivered in a less timely manner than what is available on HNN, but it leaves you more satisfied. The better informed people are, the better able they are to make wise decisions. They will think more about what they want out of political candidates. They will be more involved for good in their communities.

Many newspapers have websites where you can get the same thing you would find ideally on your doorstep and not in the bushes, but without paying for a subscription. Print media needs to find a way to be viable without newspaper subscribers, who are a dying breed. Government subsidies are not the way to go.