HONG KONG - First of all, I should say what a relief it is to be writing these
lines for an Internet publication and not for one of the soon-to-be extinct
rags that some people, mostly old people, still call daily newspapers. Most of
these media dinosaurs have reduced their size to that of a table napkin and
balk at publishing any story longer than 500 words.
They are as thin as the paper they are printed on, and their deaths should not
be mourned.
What should be tragically noted, however, is what newspapers, at least some of
them, used to be, and how we all - even before taps
is finally blown over the impoverished industry - are already much poorer for
the loss.
The lethal trend started long ago, of course, with the advent of television,
and rapidly accelerated with the creation of the Internet. Now that the
expanding global middle class can access anything we desire on mobile phones -
from our favorite games and music to the daily (even hourly) headlines that
shake and shape our world - the demise of the newspaper is assured.
Amid the economic downturn, papers are already dying all over the world,
especially in the United States. The Rocky Mountain News and the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer recently stopped the presses while other papers hang on by a
thread of dwindling advertising revenue. Even such American icons of the fifth
estate as the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Tribune Co - owner of
12 newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times - have
plunged into debt and are desperately seeking a new financial model for
survival.
In Europe, the plight of the newspaper is not as severe as in the US;
nevertheless, circulations are falling, papers are folding and the writing is
on the wall.
By comparison, the industry is thriving in Asia, but as the continent continues
its rapid development, it is hard to imagine a younger generation choosing to
reach for a newspaper instead of an i-Phone or some other hand-held wireless
device. In Asia, as elsewhere, newspapers have become an inferior, even
primitive form of communication.
That said, Hong Kong, one of Asia's most advanced cities and an international
financial center, plays host to a stunning number of newspapers. The
Chinese-language press remains intensely competitive in this city of 7 million
people. But, as 13 different papers battle for a shrinking pool of readers,
news coverage is often superficial and sensational, with some papers even
running "prostitution guides" to attract readers.
Even those guides, however, are easily accessed on the Internet; like their
counterparts in the West, most Chinese papers face an unsustainable future.
As for the city's English-language press, the South China Morning Post now
stands as the only informed local paper, with the once-proud Standard reduced
to a free tabloid, sometimes with a full-page advertisement serving as its
front page.
Other English-language papers available in Hong Kong include the world-renowned
International Herald Tribune and the Wall Street Journal Asia, both of which
continue to produce quality journalism. But these two giants of the industry
are not what they once were. The struggling regional edition of the Journal
went tabloid in 2005, and the Herald Tribune is now simply a severely
pared-down version of the New York Times, its owner.
For Hong Kong readers who prefer propaganda to journalism, there is also the
China Daily, an English-language mouthpiece for the Chinese government.
By the way, Beijing launched a second such mouthpiece around the world last
month - an English-language version of the Global Times - following the
publication earlier this year of a US edition of China Daily. And you can bet
that the Chinese leadership does not care a whit about advertising revenue or
profit or loss. (See Chinese
state media goes global
, Asia Times Online, Jan 29, 2009) It does not matter how bad these
publications are; thanks to central government funding, they will live while
real newspapers wither and die across the globe.
The only kind of print journalism that is growing, it seems, is the wrong kind.
In the US, where media trends tend to start, worried analysts have recommended
a radical restructuring of the 170-year-old newspaper industry that would
jettison its unsustainable for-profit ethic. They see newspapers of the future
as nonprofit organizations funded like public universities or endowments for
the arts.
But, even if this new model succeeded in saving newspapers, it could not
guarantee that people would read them. There are absolutely no signs that a
younger generation of readers, hooked on the Net, will ever develop that
peculiar tactile appreciation of the news enjoyed by their grandparents and a
fast diminishing number of their parents. They will never know the simple
pleasures inherent in the physical act of purchasing a paper from a human
vendor or collecting one from their mailbox, their driveway or the lobby of
their apartment building.
Even better, of course, after the collection of the paper comes the turning of
its pages - on a bus or a train, at the breakfast table, wherever. In this
there is an intimacy, a bonding between the reader and what is being read, that
cannot be replicated by the click of a mouse and the glare of a computer
monitor or its midget offspring, the mobile phone.
Ultimately, although it does not sound like much to those who have never known
it, one of the most pleasurable advantages of a newspaper is the physical
holding of it.
But there are other, more important advantages. While television and the
Internet - with their constant updates - obviously do much better with breaking
news, newspapers have been the bastion of the kind of investigative reporting
that keeps politicians honest and the public truly informed. Famously in the
US, it was the Washington Post that led the way toward the toppling of the
corrupt presidency of Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal.
More recently, the South China Morning Post played a prominent role earlier
this year in bringing to light the tragic plight of Rohingya refugees in
Thailand. Left to the closeted bloggers and blow-dried television presenters
who increasingly dominate our current media melange, it is unlikely this story
would have ever surfaced.
So who will give voice to the voiceless and uncover the Watergates of the
future? Fox News? CNN? You can forget it - unless, of course, the story has
great visuals and can be covered in under two minutes.
Even standards at the venerable BBC, once the envy of the broadcast world, have
been falling for years amid budget slashing and lapses of journalistic
judgment. This explains why the newest kid on the international broadcasting
block, Qatar-based al-Jazeera, has had such success poaching BBC reporters and
presenters for its impressive (not to mention well-paying) English-language
channel, launched in 2006.
If television and the worldwide web are ill-suited to produce the investigative
journalism of tomorrow, we also should count out new-age newspapers like USA
Today - a paragon of superficiality that is a daily reminder of the tripe that
now passes for American journalism.
Unfortunately, as newspapers die, cut back or transform into empty vessels like
USA Today, future Watergates are far more likely to go unnoticed. This is great
news for Machiavellian leaders who are clever and devious enough to hide their
crimes from public view. And, if past and present provide any guide, there will
be a lot of them.
Seen in this light, the demise of the newspaper industry represents a threat to
democracy itself. Who will do the tedious but necessary footwork to qualify as
a proper watchdog over democratic freedoms that can be easily lost if not
assiduously guarded? Who will make the news about more than our immediate fears
and amusements?
Experts in the field say that the best-case scenario for quality newspapers of
the future is that they will find a market niche that is comparable to boutique
hotels today. If so, I am putting in my reservation now.
Kent Ewing is a Hong Kong-based teacher and writer. He can be reached at
kewing@hkis.edu.hk.
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