I’ve been a journalist for a quarter-century. I’ve written and produced news for every medium, from television to magazines, high-brow to low.<\/p>\n
(One of my earliest assignments was chronicling Boy George’s antics in London in the mid-1980s…)<\/p>\n
Most of my career has been spent in public radio. But if you ask me which newsgathering institution is most essential, most irreplaceable, my answer is simple:<\/p>\n
The newspaper.<\/p>\n
From the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal right down to our humble but vital Adirondack Daily Enterprise and Malone Telegram, newspapers are (in a word) necessary.<\/p>\n
Without them, our democracy (already an imperfect experiment) will enter a new era of uncertainty.<\/p>\n
When the history of this era is written, which threat to our society will seem more dire, fundamentalist Muslims in Pakistan or the loss of newspapers? <\/p>\n
A lot of new-media advocates say the internet will fill the void. Nonsense. <\/p>\n
Newspapers have the institutional capacity — teams of journalists, editors, photographers — to pursue complicated, investigative stories.<\/p>\n
They also have firewalls between advertising pressure and editorial content that grant them greater objectivity.<\/p>\n
Are newspapers perfect? Of course not. But their demise will leave a void that other news outlets — including public radio — simply aren’t equipped to fill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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