Much is written about the current restructuring of our society. We don’t know where we’re going, but we’re on our way.
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Every Lamplighter eventually lost his job
Like the Gaslight Era which began with streetlights and armies of Lamplighters to manage them, and domestic light fixtures of metal and pipes and fireproof glass globes, and which ended with all things electric, we are witnessing a complete substitution of one thing for another. The need for lighting didn’t go away, it increased, and new armies of workers rushed in to work the nascent system. It’s happening again today with accelerated purpose:
Newspapers and television stations are going away. This is frightening but inevitable, and the more we fight it and provide life support to these outdated forms of news delivery, the more it will hurt.
The appetite for news remains strong. I predict cities will have just one television station and every newspaper will go from print to some form of paid online service. If they haven’t done this already, all news organizations should shift priority to their websites. There is nothing happening in print and on television that cannot be done online. For their part, news consumers should determine which news sites are indispensible and be prepared to pay for them. It is becoming clear that advertising can not do it alone.
State and local governments are running out of money and increasing the taxes of citizens who are also running out of money is no longer the answer. The need for services is not going away, it is increasing. Upstate New York in particular has multiple layers of government with no one at the helm willing to advocate himself out of a job. We need a drastic pruning in the form of a metropolitan government, finally.
Law enforcement needs pruning too. Long ago, when I was a cub reporter assigned to a murder story for WTVH-TV, I asked a member of law enforcement how it was determined which agency responded in Onondaga County. Who decided if it was State Police, the Sheriff’s Department or town or village police? The answer? Whichever agency takes the first phone call for help. That’s ridiculous. Now that we call 911, why do all these police agencies even exist? Everyone of them has a Chief and a Deputy Chief and a First and Second deputy to the chief and you get the idea. How can we afford this?
I wish I knew more about finance to make intelligent suggestions for the future, but I can only identify the problems. One thing that must change is the 401K as a solution for retirement. Through no fault of our own, we’ve all lost too much of the money we need to live out our years. We did what we were told, read the prospectus and annual report and essentially threw darts at Funds that may as well have been slot machines. We need to take Lady Luck and corrupt men like Bernie Madoff out of retirement planning.
Double digit percentage increases in college tuition and single digit increases in family income cannot continue, and the answer is not to boast that you provide financial aid for half of all your students when the other half who just miss the qualifying mark have to pay for it. Saddling college graduates with a lifetime of student loans seems irresponsible and establishes as normal a borrowing mentality that is a big part of why our economy collapsed. We have a U.S. President advocating a pay-as-you-go-economy and a higher education system that says “keep borrowing”. We must alter the latter.
Our health care system needs a major overhaul which Hillary Clinton saw coming nearly 20 years ago but which was turned back by the “S” word. S for Socialist. I have many European friends from socialist countries who complain the system over there isn’t perfect, but I never hear them worry about seeing a doctor of their choice, or affording a prescription medicine. It’s shameful that the greatest country in the world lands so consistently low on global rankings for affordable and accessible health care, that I wonder if we really are the greatest country in the world anymore.
Our society must change because we can no longer claim our system reliably churns out the very best of what is most important. We place beneath some small countries that many of our high school students can’t find on a map, in science, medicine, access to higher education, technology, even something as obtuse as happiness.
Out with the old, in with the new, farewell to the Gaslight Era and hello to the Electric Age. So long Second Gilded Age and welcome….. When it all shakes down, what will we call our new society? Post your suggestions below.
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There’s not much call for Mule Drivers on the Erie Canal any more either. Everything changes. It’s the Internet! Craigslist, free classified ads.
Better is if you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em.
Yup Rich, you are so right!
I see internet news as a Supplement and/or a way to get additional detail , but to me NOTHING can replace leafing through a newspaper in the morning , reading in more detail the items that seem most interesting, checking sports, comics , etc. To me the internet cannot replace this-
Hi Bob, there are many people hoping you are right. I agree, the texture of a newspaper is special and long a part of my morning routine, along with the coffee! Thanks, Maureen
Hi Maureen-
I’m going to ramble, and hope to come close to making sense of this, and by this I mean the television and newspaper part of your article. The other issues we have with us always, but due to local happenings, television and newspapers are a hot topic around here lately, and it is of them I keep thinking.
Now change….is a constant truer than death and taxes. It is like an endless, rolling tide that we have no control over. Now a new heart procedure that saves thousands of lives each year….is good change. There is also a lot of bad change, and everything in between. And there is a lot of change driven only by monetary considerations. Any change that has as its only god money is highly suspicious, for something valuable is always lost in the transition.
You mentioned television stations. I suppose that as long as we have the 3 big networks, there will be 3 main television stations in Syracuse. And if it somehow goes to one major station, we become less, in more ways than one. The major determinant is what happens to local programming. If not for the local news in the am/pm, what is there that identifies those stations with Syracuse? Besides “Bridge Street,” what truly local programming does this community have? Plug in reruns of Gilligan’s Island in place of the news and a local program, and people will need a map to tell where they are. In a large sense, we will have lost a part of our identity.
But it was your comments on newspapers that really conflicted me. Your timing is perfect, as the Post-Standard has unveiled their new business model, and part of that is just as you stated. Newspapers as they now exist have been with us for a long, long time. I understand your logic….heaven only knows that many people have turned to cable tv and computers/computer devices for their information. They have the calluses on their fingers to prove it. But there is just something about a paper, a paper you can hold in your hands, and fold, and jump from one part to the other and still have the entire spread of news and entertainment right before you, wherever you go. And it’s larger than a blackberry or laptop screen.
Then is struck me. It boils down to this….I do not want to have as my only source of news/information a television screen or a computer screen. Now don’t get me wrong, I love my hi-def and my Mac, but to be a slave to either or both is not acceptable. If I sit at a computer screen for much more than an hour, I start to go batty. There is simply too much else in life to do besides that. And it takes variety off the table…and we all require variety. Papers are one thing that fill that need, magazines another.
The same, by extension, goes for books. There is nothing like a good book hiding in your backpack, right at your fingertips for waits between flights, or at the doctors, or just to enjoy while you relax on the beach, or a porch, or on the couch when it’s raining. It’s the idea of the book itself, something you can hold and manipulate in your hands. You can pick it up and put it down. You don’t have to flip a switch or check the batteries before you read it. For me, “reading” a book by looking at some screen leaves me cold.
So, I guess I do want television stations, and papers, and magazines, and books, to thrive and survive. Time will tell how that will turn out. Things new have a tendency to swing wildly one way and then eventually find the middle, or something close to it. I remember reading once that with the advent of television, radio was supposed to be doomed to extinction.
Don
Hi Maureen-
The 4/6 issue of Newsweek has a great article on pg. 16 …”Digital Dad Versus the Dinosaurs.” It is written by a daughter of a newspaper publisher and is a perfect compliment to what you say about papers in this post.
And there have been some interesting letters to the Post-Standard about newspapers this week as well.
Seems to really be a timely topic and you scooped them all!
Don
PS..the Newsweek article is the “My Turn” column and they invite submissions of essays. You should.
Hi again Don, You flatter me. Newsweek magazine? You think? Perhaps someday. Thanks for the vote of confidence. And thanks for your comment about my “scoop”. I’m tryin’. Maureen