As print newspapers cut back or die, online media can and often do fill the gap

A former reporter for The Ann Arbor News, Lauren Slagter, has quite correctly pointed out that much of the national media has misunderstood the decision of Ann Arbor’s traditional daily newspaper to produce a print edition only twice a week and to focus on its online product.

Quoting Slagter: “Clearly, the statement that Ann Arbor doesn’t have a local newspaper is false, and the idea that news becomes inferior when it’s not printed on a page doesn’t make sense when so much of our lives takes place online. Quality journalism is alive and well in Washtenaw County, as those who are paying attention already know.”

Her full story can be found at this link: https://medium.com/@fitch.lauren/the-ann-arbor-news-hasnt-been-a-daily-paper-since-2009-it-s-time-to-get-over-it-ad96f167a63a

I’m far from the biggest fan of Ann Arbor. I’m a Michigander, but from West Michigan, and I know quite well what it’s like to see people with bumper stickers saying “secede from Detroit” — by which they mean not just the dysfunctional and dying core city, but also its suburban outposts of liberalism such as Ann Arbor, home of the University of Michigan and all the liberal claptrap that school represents.

Frankly, Ann Arbor deserves much of what it’s gotten. Like most college towns, the community is quite liberal. More important for my point, however, college towns are early warning signs of what’s going to happen nationally as not just many but most people move from reading news in print to reading news online.

On the surface, Pulaski County would seem to have very little in common with Ann Arbor. We’re rural, and while we are the largest third-class county in the state of Missouri, we’re still a rural community.

What we have in common with Ann Arbor is that because of U.S. Army Fort Leonard Wood, we have many of the same socioeconomic dynamics of a college town, or at least of a community surrounding an engineering school. We are, after all, the home of the Army’s engineer school, military police school, and chemical school. Our population is quite a bit younger than much of rural America, and because the military makes it possible to retire after 20 years in uniform, we have quite a few community leaders in their 40s or 50s who run small businesses or community organizations.

Most importantly, our population is much more attuned toward technology and the internet. Online news makes sense here, while it might not make much sense in many rural counties.

I probably agree with Ms. Slagter on very little, based on the articles I’ve found by her online.

I do agree with her on this:

“But since when did the number of days in print become the definitive measure of a publication? Printing news on a page doesn’t inherently make it better, and the internet is here to stay.”

And this:

“Without the ghosts of newspapers past clouding our vision, it becomes easier to see which sources of information actually prove most useful in our daily lives. Who’s telling you what your local elected officials are up to? How are your local schools performing? What businesses are opening and closing? How just is your county’s criminal justice system? How is that car accident that shut down the highway going to affect your evening commute?”

Print newspapers probably have a few more years left of life, at least in some parts of the United States, but they don’t have a long-term future.

The future of news is electrons, not newsprint.