Published: June 29, 2008 08:19 pm            

The Off Season: Decline of newspapers a hopeful exaggeration

For years now, folks who know a lot more about it than I do keep telling us that newspapers are going to die off soon. They say that the rise of the Internet, like Chicxulub, the meteor that helped wipe the dinosaurs off the planet millions of years ago, eventually will kill the desire for the newsprint that many of us still crave.

While paper manufacturers and home-delivery carriers and traditionalist print relics like me don’t like those facts, the experts may very well be right, but I hope not.

Despite my decidedly archaic outlook on many things, my using the Web to locate and organize information is not necessarily one of them. I research stories on the Internet, get many of my daily news, weather and sports fixes via the computer, even send this column to the Tribune-Star via e-mail without ever leaving my house to walk to the end of my driveway to meet my mail carrier.

But, I also look forward to reading the morning edition of this newspaper over a bowl of cereal and a glass of orange juice each day, and I do so after walking past both of my darkened computers and two televisions on my way to the paper box. I like to read newspapers, like the feel of one folded in my hand, enjoy spreading it out across my kitchen table, and I love to scribble my way through its crossword.

My generation obviously has had to adapt to the oncoming train of 21st century technology while our kids have grown up with it, but just because I like to wind my eight-day mantel clock and whittle sassafras twigs with a pocketknife doesn’t mean I’m a complete ignoramus when it comes to computers. According to a journal article called “Trends in Media Use,” published through a collaboration of The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and The Brookings Institution, “the typical U.S. 8- to 18-year-old lives in a household equipped with three TV sets, three video players, three radios, three PDMPs (for example, an iPod or other MP3 device), two video game consoles and a personal computer,” but I’d still be willing to bet that anybody who reads a typical daily newspaper — one like you have in your hands right now — remains just as knowledgeable and in touch.

I’m a packrat, and among some of the bits and pieces I keep is a stack of old newspapers. I know that I can access virtually any of the information in those yellowing editions on the Internet, but having a headline from the “final edition” of the Nov. 22, 1963, Terre Haute Tribune that reads “President is Assassinated; Dallas Scene of Shooting,” brings that event alive for me. It’s the compelling drama of that day, not the format that delivered it, that prompts me to re-read the Associated Press story.

One thing I very much like about reading old newspapers is that they are a virtual time capsule from any given day. The advertising that appeared in the Tribune — the evening paper in those days — on that infamous Friday already had been pasted up well in advance of Kennedy’s arrival at Love Field that morning. No store manager could have known that virtually all businesses would close that upcoming weekend out of respect for the slain president.

According to the paper, all three Schultz clothing stores, including the one at Fourth and Wabash, had men’s suits on sale, marked down to $49.95, and they came with a second pair of pants. “Two trousers give you twice the wear,” the ad said. Eight blocks to the east, Frank’s Restaurant was advertising a take-home chicken box lunch for $1.35; Woolworth’s was offering Admiral Siesta clock radios for $18.88.

The Tribune’s editorial page that day was filled with byline columns from Bob Considine and Jim Bishop; there’s no way that the latter would know that he soon would be writing an account of the President’s death, “The Day Kennedy Was Shot.” The editorial cartoon that day was from Herblock’s pen, a critique of Barry Goldwater’s stand on the military; it would be Goldwater who ran against Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, in the 1964 Presidential election. The newspaper’s prices also ran on the editorial page: mail subscriptions for the Tribune were $17.90 a year, including the Sunday edition; you could call the newspaper office at C-0581.

The death notices in the Tribune on the day Kennedy died — JFK was the very picture of youth and vigor despite private health demons such as a bad back and Addison’s disease — included those of 81-year-old Charles Earl Watson and 14-year-old Janice Combs. Ironically, a photo of 95-year-old John Nance Garner, who served as Franklin Roosevelt’s first vice president, is pictured on page 8 with them. He is shown with the two TVs he used to watch baseball games in his Uvalde, Texas, home; on his wall is, as the caption read, “an autographed picture of President John F. Kennedy, who is visiting Texas.”

Page 8 was also the place for entertainment news: the Grand Theatre was running “The Incredible Journey;” children’s tickets were 35 cents. The Indiana was showing a thriller double-feature: Vincent Price in “The Haunted Palace” and “The Mind Benders.” The Garfield (I can’t remember where it was), and the Eastside and North drive-in theaters, also were advertising.

The sports pages were active on that fateful day, too. Sprinkled among the snow tire ads and Bob McClelland’s offers to sell a new Plymouth Valiant for $95 down and $52.04 a month (he also threw in a 50,000 mile warranty and a vacation for two in Miami Beach) was Jimmy Claus’ column about George Halas’ argument with the NFL’s front office, a photo of Duane Kleuh’s Indiana State men’s basketball team, and Oscar Fraley’s “Today’s Sport Parade.”

Not long after I finished my walk through history with that old newspaper, I read a commentary by Michael Malone (yes, I did so on the Internet). He writes regularly for ABC News, and three years ago he said, “Newspapers are dead. They will never come back. By the end of this decade, the newspaper industry will suffer the same death rate — 90-plus percent — that every other industry experiences when run over by a technology revolution.”

I suspect — I hope — he’s way off base. Like Will Rogers, “All I know is what I read in the papers.” Even very old ones.

Mike Lunsford can be reached via e-mail at hickory913@aol.com, and through regular mail C/O the Tribune-Star, P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, IN 47808.

        

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