Letter from Vashon Island: Goodbye to the Post-Intelligencer, Vashon Island Real Estate
March 20, 2009 at 4:24 am Leave a comment
As an avid reader and news junkie, I have developed a daily routine which includes copious quantities of caffine and newsprint. I have lived in Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Washington,D.C., and Seattle among other great newspaper towns. These communities were distinguished by their support for two daily newspapers. Columnists battled in print, the papers developed personalities, and stories were covered from different angles. The Freedom of the Press was fully realized.
I have also lived in communities in which the newspaper was horrific. During my stay in New Orleans, I came to cringe when I read the daily paper and saw how many articles were cribbed from the Associated Press. In a City that celebrates its artistry and writing, how could the local paper be such a complete rag?
Today the Seattle Post-Intelligencer printed its last issue. The decline of papers across the country is alarming but this hit me where I live. Promises that the news office will remain open and publishing on-line are not reassuring in the slightest. I must finally concede that we live in an era in which solid news reporting has become a luxury.
When did the news media “jump the shark?” I believe it is a consequence of the superficial celebrity infatuation of this country, perhaps best exemplified by the long-running series “Entertainment Tonight,” which followed the national evening newscasts on network TV. I believe that celebrity news became closely linked to solid news reporting and American Culture lost its tolerance for hard reporting.
Now CNN treads a very fine line between entertainment/sensationalism and hard news coverage. Anderson Cooper’s 360has a nightly excreable feature in which staff and viewers assign a “comic” tagline to a topical picture . . . incentivized by, of course, a T-shirt.
Now generations of Americans have been acculturated to the Sound Bite. The internet has become a vehicle for clipped news bites, digestible “news” presented in a headline. Newsmakers have responded by feeding sound bites to “reporters, who parrot them, without analysis, to the public.
I do not believe it is too much to suggest that the loss of newspapers and journalism is a sign of the decline of our society. Absent a demand for investigative journalism, and a product that advertisers will support, comprehensive news and analysis is lost. Pulitzer Prize-worthy journalism, in which reporters might investigate a story for a year is no longer financially feasible.
Thus, farewell to the Post-Intelligencer and the spirit of competitive journalism that made Seattle an exemplary two-paper town. Samuel Clemens is probably rolling over in his grave to think that the newspaper is dying, and with it, an essential aspect of our ability to hold our government accountable for its activities and promises.
I mourn the loss of an editorial page which featured several excellent writers taking sides on issues every day on the same page that readers commented on the same topics through letters to the editor. We will never completely understand the enormity of this loss of information and the power of knowledge, gleaned through the interactive process of reacting to newspaper columns . . . but I am confident we will feel the consequences of a more poorly informed citizen.
One wonders why the papers cannot charge more for an issue . . . if we are willing to pay $4.50 a cup for custom candy coffee every day, why not a sustainable price for the newspaper? My cup ‘o joe will not taste quite as nice in the future.
Chip Lamason ~ March 17, 2009
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Entry filed under: • Community, Letters From Vashon. Tags: Letter from Vashon Island, The Seattle Post - Intelligencer.
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