In my World Cultures and Literature Class at the University of Houston, I find the biggest challenge to get my students to read their assignments. They are fine if it is their turn to present on a reading. Otherwise, its like pulling teeth - or giving them dumbed down multiple choice tests to force them to read the assignment.
The economy may be killing the newspapers, but our culture has also pushed the dagger deeper. We are all about youtube videos, TV shows, movies, World of Warcraft - anything that stimulates the brain at a high rate of speed. But reading is just too slow for most of us.
Once in a while a few students will get particularly interested in a topic. These days it is a book we are (supposedly) reading titled Good Muslim, Bad Muslim. The few that are reading it are fascinated. They are looking for more information; they discuss it among themselves. What makes the difference between these young people and the ones who don't care? I wish I knew.
And now... our newspapers are dying. The only major Houston newspaper has now joined the injured. "Chronicle laying off 12% of its employees," March 25, 2009. How much is the economy and how much is it that we just don't read anymore?
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The Death of American Newspapers
Democracy Now
March 27, 2009
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to a major crisis, the crisis of newspapers in this country. Juan?
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, the New York Times and Washington Post have become the latest newspapers to announce plans to downsize their staffs. On Thursday, the New York Times Company said it will lay off 100 people, about five percent of its staff. In addition, the Times is temporarily cutting the pay of its non-union workers by five percent in return for ten days leave. The layoffs and salary cuts will affect employees at both the New York Times and Boston Globe.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post has announced it is offering employees another round of early retirement packages, or “buyouts.” Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth said the buyouts will, quote, “allow us to reduce costs and gain efficiency while we continue to restructure for the future.”
AMY GOODMAN: As papers across the country continue to fold or downsize, policy officials and experts are contemplating a series of proposals to help newspapers stay afloat.
On Capitol Hill, Democratic Senator Benjamin Cardin of Maryland has introduced the Newspaper Revitalization Act. He wants to make it easier for newspapers to become nonprofit publications.
Meanwhile, two longtime media activists from the group Free Press have proposed a bold solution: a government intervention to save American journalism. In an article in The Nation magazine, Robert McChesney and John Nichols propose a multi-part journalism economic stimulus package. They call for all Americans to receive an annual tax credit for the first $200 they spend on daily newspapers, free postage for many periodicals, government funding for high school and college journalism projects, and a large expansion of funding for public and community broadcasting.
To talk more about this, we’re joined by Bob McChesney from Madison, Wiscsonsin, co-founder of the media advocacy group Free Press and a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
We welcome you to Democracy Now!, Bob. Lay out the plan.
ROBERT McCHESNEY: Well, the plan simply is this. The commercial system of journalism, which has dominated in the United States for the past 150 years, is collapsing. It’s disintegrating. And we’re really left as a society with a basic option: are we going to have journalism or not?
If we’re going to simply sit around and hope that the business community, Wall Street and Madison Avenue, are going to come up with a way to rescue it and give us the sort of journalism we need, we’re not going to get there. It’s pretty clear that’s not going to happen.
And that means we’re going to have to turn to enlightened policymaking, direct and indirect government subsidies, to give us the resources to do journalism. And you already did a great job, Amy, of outlining the key elements of what we see as an emergency stimulus plan. And by “emergency stimulus,” we mean something that will get us through the crisis so we can have time, buy time, to come up with a coherent plan that we can eventually have multiple newsrooms of well-paid quality journalists covering their communities across the country that will segue into the digital era. link to interview
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