Closing doors
Toolbox
Published: July 11, 2009
The closing of the Claremont (N.H.) Eagle-Times came as a shock to people in the Claremont region, including Vermont communities covered by the paper, and also to people in the news business across Vermont.
"The closing of a newspaper means a little piece of democracy has died." That was the comment of Edgar May, former state senator and a community leader in Springfield. May knows what he is talking about. He earned a Pulitzer Prize in the early 1960s for articles about poverty in America. He showed that newspaper reporting can make a difference, and he went on to a career in public service following his successes in the news business.
To say that a piece of democracy has died is to suggest the process involving each citizen has undergone a withering. It may seem self-serving for the writer of a newspaper editorial to say so, but the exchange of ideas and information that occurs on the pages of the newspaper is the stuff of democracy. If you are reading these words, then you are part of that exchange. Democracy necessarily is a turbulent, pervasive, unending conversation among people in a community and their representatives. The conversation is premised on the idea that no one and no group have infallible wisdom. Together we must debate our way into the future.
The Eagle-Times has apparently fallen victim to the twin killers stalking the world of journalism all across the country. First is the economy, which has squeezed businesses that advertise in newspapers, causing a plunge in advertising revenues. Second is the technological revolution that has opened up a whole new world of Internet information to which people have turned for news and commerce.
Newspapers are learning that their survival depends on their ability to provide a service that is available nowhere else. A regional newspaper, such as the Eagle-Times or the Herald, is not primarily in the business of providing national and international news, though showing the connections between the local and the global remains important. What small regional papers provide is news available nowhere else in detail and depth.
Readers get a lot of news off the Web, but who on the Web will be sitting in on the municipal and school boards of Claremont? Other papers in the region will cover Claremont, but more likely as a peripheral region, not as their central focus. In time, people in the region may see the absence of a daily paper as an opportunity, establishing new outlets, either online or in print. Let's hope so.
There is something to be said for print. A stack of newspapers on a store counter is a unifier. It is something everyone sees and refers to. We may have our favorite Web sites, but we don't have them in common. Maybe enterprising journalists in Claremont can develop a Web site devoted to Claremont and its environs, and maybe readers will turn to it. But a Web site is not a newspaper.
It's clear that the economics of the news business are changing. The old model delivered eyeballs to print advertisements by luring them onto the pages with the news. Now news is available elsewhere, and unless it occupies a unique niche, the news is not a sure method of delivering those eyeballs. Also, advertisers have other avenues, such as Craigslist, which has decimated classified advertising sections in newspapers across America.
Craigslist itself shows how current changes are causing economic havoc. Classified advertising departments in newspapers across America employed thousands of people and generated significant revenue for newspapers and readers in thousands of communities. Much of that economic activity has simply disappeared, replaced by a service that employs a couple of dozen people at a Craigslist office somewhere.
For the news professionals and the dedicated publisher who have taken the hit in Claremont, the loss is felt acutely in the newsrooms of Vermont. Readers are also feeling the loss; at least, we hope they are.
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