The Rocky Mountain News: gone. The San Francisco Chronicle: going. The print edition of the Christian Science Monitor is no more. Seattle and Tucson may be next. Across the nation newspapers are stopping the presses and turning out the lights for good. Hapless journalists are burning shoe leather looking for jobs instead of scoops. Conventional wisdom blames vanishing subscribers and consequent shrinking advertising revenues, as an entire generation raised on glowing screens shuns what used to be black and white and read all over. But that's not the reason for the death of the daily paper.
Take today's New York Times. Please. The lead story is about the economy going further into the toilet. Elsewhere on the front page we learn that broadcast TV is on life support, along with liberal arts colleges and the sport of cycling. Peering inside we're told nuclear armed Pakistan is on the way to becoming the next Somalia, Ireland's about to become the next Iceland, Argentinean farmers are mad as hell, US officials behaved horribly at Guantanamo, and US flyers are giving on the job training to Afghani pilots – with neither speaking a word of the other's language. Can you say plane wreck? In Pashto? And US troops are going to be in Iraq through 2011.
The news, in other words, is all bad. Very, very bad. Now granted that some, perhaps even much, of it happens to be true. But who wants to be assaulted with an eyeful of terrible news first thing in the morning? It's like drinking a shot of vinegar instead of coffee.
So here's a modest proposal to save newspapers everywhere. Instead of the multi-section editions that appear now, segregating business from the arts and business and sports, print a two section newspaper instead. Section one is good news. Section two is bad. What's that? Section one would have too much white space? Maybe. But it all depends on how you define good news. Did you catch the reaction to the performance of the GOP's young hopeful, Bobby Jindal, the other night? Or how about the anger southern GOP governors are arousing with their talk of rejecting federal funds for extended unemployment benefits? Meanwhile have you read the name Cheney lately, or Rumsfeld or Bush? There's good news out there if you but look for it.