It is no secret that print newspapers are at death’s door.
Some papers, such as The New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, are alive and well. These are national papers despite their parochial names. They continue to have readership growth, especially their online editions. Many older people grew up reading at least one or two papers a day. If you commuted to school or work by public transportation, newspapers were in the hands of 80% of the riders. Perhaps this is part of the explanation for why these few papers thrive.
Fifty years ago, there were no cable news stations. Local TV news was 30 minutes followed by 30 minutes of network broadcasts of world and national reports. Back then, reading a newspaper was the best way to find out what was going on in your town. I remember having several daily newspapers in our home as a kid.
Even today, I read two or three papers every day. I watch cable news, occasionally PBS and, only when a hurricane is approaching, local TV. One of the papers I do read is Stuart News. For the past several years, I have received only the digital version, and I read it everyday wherever I happen to be.
Our world has changed with social and digital media. Most Americans just don’t spend the money to buy a local newspaper any longer. An old law that legal notices should be published for the public’s information is an antiquated idea. I don’t know about you, but the first thing I do for information regarding Stuart or Martin County government is go on their websites.
Those websites are my first stop if I want to know whether there is a meeting or not. I can find the entire meeting agenda and most of the backup for the items. In the newspaper, all that is published is what is required by statute. The website is free and while I like and support newspapers, I don’t think taxpayers should subsidize them. Requiring publication of meeting, legal, and all government notices in the classifieds is something whose time has passed.
I find it ironic that newspaper companies have and continue to lobby hard for this subsidy. They are usually champions against government waste. When was the last time any of us looked to the Stuart News to find out about an upcoming meeting? In the age of Facebook and Twitter, email notifications and websites, I would choose many other options before going through the classifieds.
Government websites could be mandated by statute to have special sections to make it easy for the public to find notices. There is still a small segment of the population that can’t or won’t use the internet, but those individuals are becoming fewer and fewer. We shouldn’t burden taxpayers with subsidizing a medium that they no longer find relevant in their daily lives. It is too bad that something that I personally love has become so irrelevant.