I’ve been meaning to post this for some time now.
Basically, a major city is scaling back its printed newspapers and are only reporting online. Now, this bothers me. Forget that this city is largely composed of minorities with a large portion being poor. Let’s forget that (though, I really have not forgotten this at all and is the whole premise of me wanting to write about it). I ask you to forget this fact not because it is unimportant, but because in this case it shouldn’t be a color thing. This is a thing of news and important media not being easily accessible to ALL residents of a community. This is a problem because there is a large portion of the community who are poor. Most people’s perception of others is closely linked with how they view society from their world. In most people’s world/mind – people are online, tech savvy, have the internet and computer at home, are online reading the news, or have a Kindle/iPad/tablet and read the NY Times on their way to work. The unemployment rate is getting better for everyone and those that aren’t getting jobs aren’t getting them because they aren’t trying… BIG FAT NEGATIVE.
There is still a good portion of the population without access to a computer or internet at home. There are still people without smart phones (though that number is diminishing). There are people who rely on printed news for their information in the community, nation, world, etc. Without a printed version of news, how would these people get important information? A library perhaps. Well, maybe, but from my neighborhood alone I can tell you – we have one library. They do not get printed newspapers anymore and they only allow you computer access once daily for 30 minutes. They are open odd times – times that I cannot keep track of because they are continually being cut.
This is injustice at its finest… who knew we news was a privilege…
notjustmythoughts
notjustmythoughts 
I have several thought-provoking questions. 1. who’s reading the newspaper? What demographic? And what share of that readership is done by the economically less fortunate? 2. (which follows the first) out of that readership (132,000 according to the article) how many also have internet access? Is this population also more likely to read news on the internet or are internet users who read the news online mutually exclusive? 3. What are the reasons for people to read the hard copy version of the news versus the online version besides having internet access? do those without internet access make up the bulk of the readership? All of these things are not outlined in the article, and are only assumed, so how does one know the impact of this cost-cutting strategy of scaling back newspapers? And my last comment is this: it’s all for corporate interest at the end of the day. Print news is not for the public good but is done for investment, and in many cases all news is biased news–be it online or in print, on tv or from some ad. News shapes opinion and sets the agenda for what is discussed. None of it is trustworthy. To be informed is to read multiple sources of news coverage–from national to local–and to choose alternative sources for news. So I ask, what is the importance of this cut back for the socially and economically disadvantaged? Libraries are definitely a problem. Large newspapers, not so much. 😉
With love and respect, JT 😉
Thank you for reading. In response to your comment:
I’ll be honest – I don’t have any of the answers to your questions. For me the importance was in the broader scope of what this article could mean for a lot of people. The article also left me wanting, and I hadn’t posted this because I kept saying I would research this more throughly. I never did, but then I decided to post anyway because I would want people to think about it. News, in general, is very biased no matter which form as you’ve said, but it is nonetheless an important source of information for people. And the fact still remains that there are a lot of people across the country without access to technology or even easy access to a library. AND as we’ve witness with other things past once one person gets the go ahead others will follow and there lies the real issue.
Keep reading…
Also with love and respect,
notjustmythoughts
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