Justin Peacock

Did Print Die Today?

When future historians trace the migration of the written word from print to the internet, today will be a contender for the tipping point. (I'm sure there are many more such days to come...) After 146 years as a newspaper, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (known as the P-I) has announced that it is publishing its final newspaper, but that it will continue on as a web site.  But make no mistake, the online version of the P-I will be a very different thing from the newspaper it has been, as the New York Times reports: "the P-I ... will resemble a local Huffington Post more than a traditional newspaper, with a news staff of about 20 people rather than the 165 it has had, and a site consisting mostly of commentary, advice and links to other news sites, along with some original reporting."

I used to work as an in-house lawyer for the Hearst Corporation, focusing primarily on working with the company's newspapers.  During that time I worked very closely with the P-I's newsroom.  The editors and reporters there were first rate, personally and professionally. So I feel the loss of the P-I personally, but am also worried about where such losses will leave us.

The P-I is not the first regional newspaper to fail as this severe recession comes on top of what has already been a terrible few years on the business side of newspapers.  Just a couple of weeks ago, the Rocky Mountain News closed down entirely after 150 years. The P-I is however the first such paper to try and make the switch to continuing as a web-only publication. 

I fear that people outside the journalism community are still not realizing the catastrophic nature of such a change.  This is in no way a Luddite's stand: I love the internet, and get most of my news from it. Bloggers and citizen journalists can and have done things that newspaper can't or hadn't.  If newspapers could cease printing physical papers and migrate fully to the web while still fully functioning I would have little concern.  But there's absolutely no sign that they can pull this off.

Why does it matter?  Because however imperfect they may be, newspapers are still this country's only consistent source of actual investigative journalism.  Such journalism takes resources, it takes expertise, and it takes a lot of time.  I've never been an investigative reporter, but I had the opportunity to work closely with a number of them as a newsroom lawyer, and have a fairly good idea of the amount of work that goes in to a significant piece of investigative reporting.  It is vitally important to a functioning society to have it.  And I'm deeply worried that we're in the midst of putting it out of business.

But as Clay Shirkey writes in a perceptive recent essay on this subject: "'You’re gonna miss us when we’re gone!' has never been much of a business model."  Shirkey is clearly more optimistic than I am that something will arise out of the internet -- even if no one yet know what -- that will fill whatever void is left by the death of newspapers. Similarly, Steven Johnson recently gave a thought-provoking speech on the subject.  While I agree with much of what they say, my concern is that neither Shirkey nor Johnson seems to show much understanding of what actual investigative journalism consists of, and therefore they overestimate the ways that bloggers and the like can duplicate it. 

For example, Johnson compares the Sunday New York Times' City section to the numerous blogs that cover the city's neighborhoods and finds the latter far superior.  This is true, but is hardly an argument that the vital newsgathering role of the New York Times has been supplanted by blogs.  After all, judging the New York Times by the City section is a little like judging NBC by what it airs between 2 am and 4 am.  Blogs and so-called hyper-local news sites are great, and an important addition.  If I want to know what people are saying about the new noddle joint that opened up the street from me, I hit the Brooklyn blogs.  But true investigative journalism still largely belongs to newspapers, and I don't see who is going to replace them at it if they go.

Yes We Did

I spent election day as a volunteer lawyer for the Obama campaign in Philadelphia.  The polling place I was assigned to was located in a barber shop in a north Philly neighborhood called Fern Rock.  It was an African-American community of well-tended row houses, many of which had been occupied by the same families for as long as fifty years.  There were relatively few first-time voters at my polling place; there were a relatively large number of voters past retirement age. 

For some of those older voters, simply physically getting to the polls was clearly an ordeal.  A handful of them were in wheelchairs, others used canes.  But it was obvious that nothing would have kept them away.  Many parents brought their children into the voting booth with them. It rained on and off throughout the day, but the weather never made much of a difference. 

I spent much of the day with a married couple, Mr. and Mrs. Logan, who were at the polling place for virtually every second of the thirteen hours it was open.  Now in their seventies, they had lived in the neighborhood for essentially their entire adult lives.  They knew most of the people who lived there, often three generations of a family.  They were there to support Barack Obama, yes, but also to support their community.  Mrs. Logan was on her feet virtually the entire day (I confess that at half her age, I needed more breaks than she did). 

Two things struck me as I spent my day in Fern Rock.  One was the extent to which this community exemplified the "small town values" that Republicans in general and a certain Vice Presidential candidate in particular was always going on about.  This was a neighborhood where people not only knew each other's names, but knew the names of parents and children, too.  A community where people said hello to one another on the street.  A community where the Church played a big role (Church activities were the single biggest topic of conversation I heard other than the election itself). A neighborhood where the older people were referred to as Mr. and Mrs. and not by their first names.  The only differences between this community and the so-called "real America" was that this neighborhood was located in a big city, and virtually every one of its residents was black.

While it was inspiring beyond measure to witness the obvious pride and absolute joy of African-Americans old and young casting their vote for the first African-American President, for me it was tempered somewhat by the fact that this neighborhood appeared to be as segregated as it is possible to be.  I wonder how many of the millions of white Americans who voted for Barack Obama have ever set foot in a part of America where they are in the minority.  I wonder how many white Americans who just helped make Barack Obama the President of the United States would nevertheless feel uncomfortable if they found themselves in a neighborhood like Fern Rock. On as triumphant a day for America as I have experienced in my lifetime, I was reminded of how drastically premature it is to declare an end to America's history of racial  misunderstanding and strife. 

But how far we've come! My wife and I drove back to New York last night along with two other lawyers who had also been volunteering in Philly.  By the time we'd started for home the networks were already calling Pennsylvania for Obama.  Ohio followed shortly thereafter, at which point we knew it was pretty much over. 

Once back in our Brooklyn neighborhood shortly after the race had been called for Obama, my wife and I, exhausted and a little unsteady on our feet, wandered the streets for a while.  There were people everywhere, yelling, whooping, shooting off fireworks.  Cars honked their horns.  We watched some of McCain's concession speech on the sidewalk outside a bar, along with maybe fifty other people.  On Washington Avenue in Prospect Heights the street had been virtually taken over by people celebrating, that neighborhood's diversity fully reflected in the wide mix of people dancing and making a joyful noise.

We ended up watching Obama's speech in a pool hall on Flatush Avenue that was blasting it so loudly we could hear its siren song from a block away, the entire place jam-packed with people like us who'd been lured in by the sound.  People stood shoulder to shoulder and cheered and cried, as though we're were standing in that Chicago park.

That was my little piece of this extraordinary day.