View From The Middle
Weekly Newspapers Are Doing Just Fine, Thank You
By Charles Rogers

While everywhere you look, so-called pundits seem to be predicting the demise of the newspaper as we know it because of electronic media and the Internet, there is still an arm of journalism that's doing quite well in its own inventive - yet traditional - way, thank you: the community newspaper.

Hey! That's us! That's the Canarsie Courier and its non-daily buddies throughout the country; the ones that relay information about, to and for smaller communities; the info about community people, upcoming and past events; and, of course, advertising on a real neighbor-to-neighbor basis, not just some rhetorical, general blurb (or blog?).

According to a 2007 re-survey of a 2005 landmark study by the National Newspaper Association (NNA), readership of community newspapers in the U.S. has actually gone up in the past three years. It's only a slight increase (83%, up from 81% in '05), but that's something your dailies haven't done in a long while.

The president of NNA, Steven Haynes, said in the latest issue of PubAux-Publisher's Auxiliary, the monthly industry newspaper, "We know community newspapers have a different story to tell than some of the big dailies. NNA initiated this research two years ago with the help of the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism. We felt it important to revisit and update the data to see if our initial findings held up, and they have."

Some daily newspapers, even as we speak, are shaking in their boots because of the "devastation" wreaked on the industry due to blogs, either on YouTube or anywhere else, or on individual Internet agencies. They say the articles and ads are being dispatched and read by literally thousands, reaching a wide, wide audience they never even hoped to reach except, perhaps, by association.

But wait. It's nice to be able to read what our neighbors think, no matter how well it's phrased - or how badly. It's even nice to know that someone in Utah is paying attention to your blog from Brooklyn, New York.

But most bloggers aren't journalists. Oh, there are a few that even the best of the best daily newspapers use online. Frankly, I think it's partly a ruse - a wise ruse - to whet the appetite of the lazy Internet browser so he or she might look a little farther and, maybe, pick up a paper at the nearest newsstand. Most of the time, if you go through a few listings on YouTube.com, those who blog are "opinionists," (if you don't mind my coining a word - sounds more like a Latin American terrorist organization: "The Opinionistas are coming!"). And it's up to the readers, especially those who have a tendency towards gullibility, to be careful to discern where truth begins and fantasy ends - or the opposite.

Many so-called writers happen to use an Internet attribution source known as Wikipedia nowadays. And while using it is fast and convenient, it has been said that it is also not necessarily true. In other words, where the reader may think Wikipedia is akin to encyclopedia - it's not. It doesn't purport to be. At times, some definitions are nowhere near the true meaning of the word.

Unfortunately, the expedience of the Internet does have a bearing on the day-to-day reporting of news. We see a decline in TV audience or daily newspaper readership because people are more and more checking their computers to see the one-line headline of what happed in the world that day - no matter what the source. They supposedly don't have time to watch the Evening News or to sit back on the couch and read one of the dailies.

Ah....But what they do have is their weekly community newspaper! This is the journal they don't throw out; the one with the ads in it; the one with the coupons in it for the weekend sales; the newspaper you pick up on a Thursday, check through it for whatever is happening, put it down next to the couch...and then pick it up again Saturday morning to see where the closest garage sale is. Or you hang on to it so you can show grandma the pictures of her grandchildren in the Black History Month play at Public School 272.

Oh, yeah, the NNA is proud to announce that their Community Newspaper Readership Survey shows the public hangs onto - and reads - their local newspaper seven days a week almost 50 percent of the time; and they get their local news the same percentage of the time from the community paper. The rest they get from TV (20%), radio (6%), the internet (3.6%) and "others."

Just thought you'd like to know - we're here to stay!

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