Reiniers: In memoriam
Many readers were greatly saddened to read the Hernando Today will cease publication — the demise of a piece of local culture. A record of local history will be lost forever.
I started writing for the paper in the last century – hundreds of columns ago – but my archives on this computer only go back to 2000 when I wrote an op-ed piece about the Paul Sullivan-William “Alonzo” Merritt debate for a seat on the County Commission.
On April 15, 2009, Hernando Today published a piece I wrote entitled, “The Printed Word – Obsolete?” That was more than five years ago but “the handwriting was on the wall.” (That saying may become obsolete as well as some elementary schools are dropping cursive writing from their curriculums. Even the little ones are going straight from the bottle to the keyboard.)
At the risk of quoting myself, I wrote: “We are in a state of flux, but while Elvis may have left the building, newspaper readers haven’t. It’s their advertisers who have.” Publishers had to slim down the product and staff to a point where the paper became so thin it was hard for a newspaper deliverer to throw a newspaper accurately from a moving car. So readers gave up, and now spend their time titillating on Facebook and other social media.
If advertisers have moved to the internet, they must know that every user ignores the commercials or is aggravated by “pop up” ads or junk e-mails. If they advertise on TV, everyone records their favorite shows and fast-forwards through the commercials. Even when I’m exercising on the treadmill or stationery bike, I will mute commercials. I am an advertiser’s worst nightmare.
Even back then I wrote that researchers reported that about 40 percent of internet users visit newspaper websites, but studies revealed that “readers scan the digital product and only read 20 percent of the words.”
This is the part that is scary. I frequently write about the undereducated voter. Even a functionally literate person easily can become an internet gadfly clicking their way along from one subject to another looking for something eye-catching. No wonder attention deficit disorder is increasing – the point being that if you are reading the printed word you are stuck with what is in front of you, so you are more inclined to absorb the information before your eyes.
If I may quote myself again, I concluded the column with media critic William Powers, who keenly noted in a discussion at Harvard that technology simply is imitating what we already have. That is the printed word. Powell observed: “Paper itself is the inescapable metaphor, the paradigm, the tantalizing goal. The new medium will be deemed a success if and when it no longer is an imitation of paper, but the real thing – when it becomes paper.”
Five years later I believe it almost has become the real thing to some researchers, college students and serious readers of op-ed opinion pieces – the goal being for the user to be as engrossed in the digital word as they would be if studying printed material. (Sometimes it can be a little cumbersome when reading a nonfiction book online or on Kindle and you try to go back and review material you had read earlier.)
In a capitalist economy it all comes down to the bottom line. When the ink turns red, management pulls the plug. Nothing is free. It is the height of idealism to suggest all medical care should be free and provided by nonprofits, but many do. Somebody has to pay for a service or a product. Wealth has to be created before it can be redistributed. The taxpayer will not subsidize the newspaper business. It’s a shame that a business model couldn’t be developed to keep advertisers on board.
And book publishers are not immune. Technology has been a threat to bookstores for years. Borders has gone out of business and Barnes and Noble, which has closed down hundreds of stores, will be next. But it is clear the print book will survive. Reading for pleasure has barely declined. The big difference between the two business models being, as recently reported by The Economist in a lengthy piece cleverly entitled “From Papyrus to Pixels,” observed that “the fate of newspapers has been driven by the decline of advertising – a business publishers (which sell books to readers, not readers to advertisers) were never in.”
Time marches on. I remember well my incarnation as a novice newspaper pressman, climbing up on a press to take off the printing plates; tossing them on the deck and into the melting pot to be ready for casting and installation for the for next day’s publication. How quaint.
So time also marched on for Hernando Today. It will be sorely missed by many.
John Reiniers is a retired attorney and columnist who lives in Spring Hill. Email him at [email protected].
