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FeatureIn the eye of the newsworld stormLet’s not forget the key ingredient of credible daily journalismPHOTO BY ROGER ARCHIBALDBy MICHAEL MANSURI can imagine that many of us working at a newspaper arebeginning to feel a bit like a soldier in a World War I trench. Yourbuddies are falling all around you and you figure you may soonjoin them.And the only thing you know to do is fight on. It seems nobleto do so. Besides, you think, where else can I go?Years ago, in my first big-city job, I sat for a first time with mynew newspaper buddies in a local pub. Charlie Roper, a longtimeeditorial writer and a great newspaper man at the Memphis Press-Scimitar — Edward Meeman’s old newspaper, now shuttered, ofcourse —was telling a story from his J-school days at theUniversity of Arkansas.“What’s the purpose of a newspaper,” he quoted hisjournalism school prof.Around the room, Roper related with great barroom flourish,the students stretched up their arms to answer.“Right wrongs.”And the teacher shook his head.“Help the afflicted.”No.“Give them light…..” Roper said, quoting from what was themotto of Scripps-Howard, the company that owned the newspapersin Memphis.No, the teacher replied. “It’s to make money.”Indeed, almost every newspaper in America is a business.Problem is that, for most of my career, I never really had to thinkmuch about the truth of Roper’s story. I remembered it, but ithardly ever affected me or what I did.Then came 2008-09.If it’s not known later as the Great Depression of the 21stCentury it will be known as the year that newspapers, as we hadknown them for decades, died. Some are quite gone — the RockyMountain News and maybe even the San Francisco Chronicle. TheAnn Arbor News and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer just announcedthey are going all online.Serious doubts are being raised about other news organizationsas they struggle on. But its plight is about more than newtechnology strangling its revenues. Strangely, my newspaper,The Kansas City Star, and its other brothers in the McClatchy news5 SEJournal Spring 2009chain of newspapers were profitable in 2008. Yes, they weremaking money. But the corporation that owned them carried alarge debt.And the recession came, of course. Advertising fell. As didthe newspaper’s profits.Won’t it come back with the economy? That’s one hope. But,then again, I wonder. Might the advertisers who left the printpublications return, even with good economic times? Might theold business model of private advertisers paying the freight for thenation’s reportage be so fractured by the Internet that only newbusiness models will flourish?Those worried about the print journalism world’s continuedexistence find much to point to in recent weeks beyond the deathnotices of once-great publications like the Post-Intelligencer.The Pew Research Center for the People and the Pressreleased these findings in March: Fewer than half of Americanssay that losing their local newspaper would hurt civic life in theircommunity “a lot.” Even fewer (33%) say they would personallymiss reading the local newspaper a lot.I wasn’t surprised. Just counting the front lawns in the morningthat still have newspapers awaiting a homeowner signals thosenumbers are not so far off. But, then again, who wouldn’t establisha business that reached 200,000 homes in almost any Americanmetropolitan area?Also, what percentage of Americans would say the same aboutan Internet news site?Meanwhile, no viable alternative to producing local dailyjournalism has surfaced. With hope, we look to websites like the Voice ofSan Diego. Funded with non-profit dollars, it’s recently attracted the attentionof The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, among others, as apotential model for future local coverage.The site — www.voiceofsandiego.org — displays an impressiveamount of quality, prize-winning journalism. But so far thesite attracts only 60,000 unique viewers each month.So the way out of this predicament has not surfaced as yet.There is officially no way to keep alive credible daily journalism,especially local coverage, if newspapers fail. And it must be somethingwith more information than 140-character tweets.What emerges, I suspect, will be some combination or