• Tag Archives newspapers

  • More on Newspapers

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    “Gardening is an active participation in the deepest mysteries of the universe.”  Thomas Berry

    I knew there was some reason I liked gardening.

    My father edited a small-town daily for a long time.  It, like many of its kind, disappeared after the Canadian newsprint crisis in the early 1970’s.  I know what it means to lose a newspaper, for the jobs associated with it to leave town.

    Citizens have much less information about government and business, the particular governments and businesses that affect their daily lives.  This lack of information makes democracy much more difficult.  It allows those who would abuse and misuse the public trust less likely to get caught.

    I’m for any form of organization that meets the challenge, though I have reservations about L3C status, not for the Strib, but for the probability of its misuse.

    I’d jettison the presses and the rolls of newsprint, phase out the circulation staff and go strictly online.  I’d charge for this service in a way that reflected those saved costs.

    Disintermediation is only a problem if you’re not taking advantage of it yourself.


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  • Fading Into History? Pt. II

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    11  rises 30.11  NW0  wchill11   Winter

    Full Wolf Moon

    My sister wrote to say that Dad was 82 when he had his stroke.  He worked until then as the circulation manager for the Times-Tribune.  He loved newspapers and he was a depression era guy, work work work.  He took newspapers to the racks in retailers where those who did not have the paper mailed to them could pick it up.

    Therein lies the second phase of this story.

    The great Canadian newspaper shortage, which I imagine none of you remember, drove the cost of newsprint beyond the reach of many small town dailies.  It happened to coincide, at least as I recall, with the rise of the offset printing process.  Offset printing eliminated the Linotype and the Heidelberg.

    Photosensitive sheets became the print from medium.  These could be handled with no lead and the printer’s ink from before came in a less viscous form, less perfume, too.

    Offset printing is the modern method of printing, but its dominance of the printing world spelled the death knell for many small town papers.  The capital costs of getting out of the letter press era and into offset was more than most could bear.   The result?  Printing became centralized with many small town newspapers printed in one location.  In the case of the Alexandria Times-Tribune this meant the paper came off the press in Elwood, some 8 miles away.

    In most small towns the daily paper’s time had come an end.  In the best case the papers became weeklies with a small reporting and advertising staff–often the same people–working out of a storefront office.  In the worse case they became shoppers, thin to non-existence news surrounded by page after page of advertising.  The shopper made money, but it was not a newspaper.

    The rest of the story will come later.  I have to get ready to preach.  Bye for now.


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