On October 1, 2012, four newspapers owned by Advance Publications,
“The Birmingham News”, the Mobile “Press-Register”, “The
Huntsville Times” and the New Orleans major newspaper, “The
Times-Picayune”, all moved to a three-day publication schedule.
This move, along with similar cutbacks and reductions in other
newspapers nationwide (usually caused by a serious drop in
advertising revenue) led many to predict the imminent demise of the
daily newspaper.
That prediction seems to have been somewhat premature, though it’s true many are still struggling. The respected “Washington Post” was recently sold, and the venerable “Boston Globe” has encountered problems. So have many more of the larger newspapers. But some have successfully adjusted to decreased revenue by cutting staff, reducing other expenses, and upping subscription prices. And many smaller papers have hung in there, and survived.
Our local newspaper, “Florida TODAY”, recently did a thorough revamp, including changing the B section to a reduced version, usually six or eight pages, of “USA TODAY”. Parent company Gannett did the same with 34 more local papers they own. Counting the mini-versions along with the much larger stand-alone, “USA TODAY” now claims a daily circulation of nearly 3.3 million, the largest of any US newspaper. And hopefully, adding the “USA TODAY” segment at no extra charge will help these smaller papers “live long and prosper”.
The A section of “Florida TODAY” changed to emphasize local news, including business activities, social affairs, and the comics. Sports still has its own section, and includes national and international coverage along with local news. The “USA TODAY” section provides national and world news, including financial and entertainment segments.
“Florida TODAY” began life as just “TODAY”, before Gannett President Allan Neuharth , who started this new paper as the local publisher and rode its success to the top spot in Gannett, decided to also create the first general interest national newspaper. He and his team modeled “USA TODAY” on “TODAY”, and then added “Florida” to the local title for greater differentiation.
The fact that my local paper seems back on equilibrium is encouraging. “Florida TODAY” isn't a large paper, serving primarily our county of over half a million, with substantial sales in the smaller county south of us. It now costs close to a dollar a day for the print version, home delivered. A digital version, read on your Kindle, other tablet or smart phone, costs much less.
In an era in which anyone can go on-line and claim to be dispensing 'news', I think the old standards of verification from several sources, and/or confirmation by direct contact, have taken a severe hit. We need the discipline and rigor of professional reporters if the ‘news’ is to have any real value. We can get personal opinion (as opposed to a reporting of reasonably well established facts) from the innumerable commentators on television.
Otherwise we're riding the Shockwave, while Standing On Zanzibar. And the Winter Of Our Discontent grows colder.
Photo credit: Patrice Green
Kenneth R. Miller has written a thoughtful examination of science in America today, and its waning appeal to both the aspiring student and the general public. (I’m not a scientist but a writer, primarily of science fiction. But I have always believed that one of the secondary but important purposes of science fiction is to serve as a handmaiden to real science.)
The root causes of this decline appear to have gained the attention of the Obama administration. Recognizing that our future as a great nation is at stake, the federal government has begun a new emphasis on the importance of science (broad scale) in public education.
The above ties in with the observations of some of our more thoughtful pundits that the 'best and brightest' of today's college students too often see careers in finance as the path toward a happy life. Far too many seem clueless in understanding that enjoying the work you do each day is far more important (and less prone to producing ulcers) than doing work you dislike, the purpose of which is to amass more money than you actually need. This is a disturbing trend in a country that, in the last century, led the world in science and technology.
In another article Sam Stein points out the deleterious effects of the Fed budget sequestration on scientific research. This is a fairly thorough examination of one of the less obvious ways our dysfunctional Congress is hurting our country, and the world. Our leadership in scientific research is slowly but surely eroding.
And a corollary -- A quite good source of foreign exchange will also fade away. Our local (fairly small) hi-tech college, The Florida Institute of Technology, recently reported that one-third of their full-time students are from other countries. I suspect much larger and better known science-oriented schools, such as MIT, Cal Tech, Stanford, etc., also have large foreign student populations. (Luckily for us, some unknown but apparently sizable percentage elect to become citizens and put their expensively acquired skills to work here.) When their parents/sponsors decide to send them elsewhere (a trend that seems to have already started, but is still in its infancy), the US will lose a significant source of foreign exchange income.
I worked for 13 years in the NASA Education Office at the Kennedy Space Center, retiring as Deputy Chief. Our two major functions were to help professional teachers better understand science and technology (with an emphasis on the space program) and encourage students to undertake careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and
mathematics); again with an emphasis on the space program. I have no statistics on how many of the students we worked with followed through and became scientists, engineers or mathematicians. I hope it was very many.
A devotion to science and technology is one of the major reasons our country has gotten to where it is today. But if our best young minds choose careers in finance, we won’t be there tomorrow. And that worries me. The idea that gaining large sums of money is the key to personal happiness has become endemic in our society. That concept needs some serious re-thinking. A life devoted to performing useful and productive work, work that you enjoy, is much more likely to provide that elusive quality called ‘happiness’. And the “pursuit of happiness” was one of the founding principles on which our country was created.
