The End of Journalism--and Civilization

While I'm on the subject of caregivers (see yesterday's post), I'd like to rant for a moment about journalism. I didn't get to see Barack Obama's State of the Union address last night--I was too busy putting Julia to bed again and again, she having decided that she would stay up until Ralph got home at 11 p.m. 

Nonetheless, I'm almost certain from reading today's papers that while the president talked about Wall Street and the Big Three in Detroit, he failed to mention the demise of journalism. We are small potatoes compared to other industries, and we will never get a bail-out. But we are dying all the same. On Monday, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News declared bankruptcy. They join the Seattle-Post Intelligencer and the Rocky Mountain News, which are for sale, and scores of other papers and magazines that have had lay-offs and/or involuntary furloughs. The Christian Science Monitor, of course, has already moved its operations to the Web. Ditto with U.S. News & World Report, where I used to work, which now puts out a magazine only once a month.

But it's not just a question of where we will read our news: we can all get used to reading the newspaper on a computer. It's what will be lost in the translation. I have one very good friend who's a devotee of the obituaries in the local paper, not because she's morose but because of the tidbits of humanity they reveal about the people who died. 

That's exactly what I've been thinking about that New York Times piece on child caregivers that I cited yesterday. If I were reading the paper online, I would scan the headlines about the economy and Iraq and Afghanistan and probably not take the time to read anything I don't have to. And having read the caregiving story, it's not as if I--or anyone else--can do anything to change the grim circumstances it lays out. Those kids will go on giving up their lives for their parents whether it becomes public knowledge or not. 

But journalism is about more than headlines; it's about more than keeping the government honest or being the whistle-blowers for big business. Its equally important role is to hold up a mirror to society; to tell us who we are. It's about the texture of our daily lives.

Few, besides my fellow journalists, seem to think that much will be lost by losing this. Journalists are reviled--lower, I'd bet, than lawyers on the food chain. Sarah Palin spoke for many Americans when she said during the campaign and afterward that we got in the way of telling the story.

But I can't help but think that what's being lost is of larger moment than a Saturn minivan, say. I think it's more a cornerstone of civilization that is crumbling.