The Bright Side of Printicide

Like many people, I think the decline of the newspaper is a slow, agonizing death of something wonderful in this country, something that not only employs many people but also served as our main news source since the invention of the printing press—and serves as the main reading material for so many today.

Every time I hear about the closing of yet another newspaper, my heart aches a little, and I continue to worry about the doomsday probabilities for other print media. But since I like to look on the bright side of things, I came up with a list of reasons why the loss of muckraker makings could actually be a good thing.

A Smiling Planet: Newspapers make up a large percentage of landfill mass. In fact, 30% of newspapers go straight to the dump! So not having these 200 million trees cut down annually for our news would be the biggest bonus.

More In-Depth News: What do we love about blogs and news online—besides easy access to thousands of sources? Links to other information, including photos and videos, are always popular. Online news allows us to look up the story about the guy who robbed the convenience store last weekend—and see a video of him wearing a stocking on his head, read other stories about his past and his troubled youth, and view pictures of him being hauled away in handcuffs.

Cheaper, easier Internet use: Though this can’t actually be proven right now, it’s sensible to infer that if the only available media were on television or online, people would have to have more access to the Internet. Prices could lower to accommodate low-income families with a basic service—perhaps even making some use free, as with television.

Better Internet Skills: While most of the country is online or at least knows how to turn a computer on, there are still plenty of citizens who don’t—simply because they are inexperienced. Free courses at the library help. So if citizens had to go online to find news, odds are that there would be even more free classes offered—perhaps at schools and colleges too; kids could get volunteer credit for teaching them!—to help get people computer-savvy, helping them in their personal and professional lives in countless ways.

Expanded vision: I literally loathe my local county paper. Sure, I glance through to see if I know who’s getting married or what’s going on in the calendar section, but we all know what these little papers are about: feely-good human interest stories (which aren’t necessarily bad, but also would not be considered news outside the county) and publishing the opinions of the county’s citizens. Though this can be nice, it’s often infuriating to me—all of the pro-prayer at city hall letters, anti-abortion ads paid for by churches… the list could go on forever.

School children often have to use these papers for reports—and they’re also often the only papers locals read, creating a very narrow window of news for many people. What if, instead of these papers, these readers would have to go online to find news sources? Sure, the local papers could simply start web pages online, but chances are they’ll run into more international stories, national highlights, and even views—gasp!—outside their own. This would be a good thing—in most cases.