It’s an interesting coincidence that the decline of our nation’s big-city newspapers and the fracturing of television and online journalism have paralleled breakdowns in the functionality of our state and federal governments.
Is a functional, thoughtful press linked to functional, thoughtful governments and communities?
My thoughts about this are reinforced by recent trips I made to my hometown of Media, Pennsylvania and to the nearby town of Marcus Hook, Pa., my father’s hometown. Let me explain.
Media is a prospering suburban city of 30,000 people, the same size as Juneau. It’s much wealthier than when I grew up there, with a picturesque main street and an escalating real estate market, a place gentrified in part by its classic brick and stone architecture.
But young people say something’s lacking, that despite its popular clubs, restaurants, and festivals, Media has no soul. Even getting an open mike event going is a struggle. A longtime resident spoke to me about a bridge that’s been closed for years, and she couldn’t get a straight answer from city hall on why it wasn’t fixed.
Marcus Hook is a gritty, struggling urban enclave of 2,000 people, the same size as Haines, squeezed in between two operating oil refineries, a lumber plant and a linoleum factory on the Delaware River. Marcus Hook residents lucky enough to get jobs in “the Hook” often move away to leafier, quieter, cleaner places.
At a recent Marcus Hook town meeting, a resident in the audience asked about a reported discharge of hazardous gas at one of the refineries and why residents weren’t notified until days later. Another resident asked why more wasn’t being done to provide the town’s children with healthy activities, noting that the town removed the hoops from it only public basketball court.
Outwardly opposites, Media and Marcus Hook share an important commonality: They each lack a town-based newspaper. A countywide newspaper provides occasional coverage of social events, tax hikes and sensational crimes, but there’s no reporting on city council meetings, no police or court blotter, no reporting on local schools, no regular coverage of any kind.
My friend in Media still doesn’t know why the bridge isn’t fixed and residents in Marcus Hook don’t know they’re not being told about toxic chemical releases.
In short, there’s no real community dialogue in these towns because there are no newspapers in which that dialogue might happen. Also, because there is no serious coverage or follow-up of town issues, there is no central narrative to begin to define the town, its successes and its failures.
To an extent, you can say there’s no “place” that these towns exist. There are some start-up Facebook pages and websites, but – like most everything else on the web – those are scattered and splintered.
Chilkat Valley News publisher Ray Menaker once said the reason he started the newspaper was to provide one account of town meetings, a common narrative that everyone could generally agree on. That’s where discussions of town and town politics would start.
A newspaper is a meeting place of ideas, including letters-to-the-editor, that raise questions and issues and where citizens begin to sort things out, based on a dialogue that is checked for factual accuracy.
This is how a newspaper keeps a community healthy, by keeping tabs on issues and allowing citizens a chance to raise questions, and by quoting decision-makers and in doing so, holding leaders accountable to the people they serve.
On a national scale, we once had three television networks using public airwaves. As part of the privilege of using the public airwaves, networks (and radio stations) were governed by the federal Fairness Doctrine. Under that law, when networks stepped outside “news” to provide editorial comments, they were required to provide equal time on the air for opposing views.
After more than 30 years on the books, the Fairness Doctrine was repealed in 1987, leading to all-conservative talk radio and ultimately to today’s Tower of Babel, with editorial comment on TV and the Internet disguised as news.
Lay people who are not savvy don’t know what to think or whom to believe. Some give up trying.
On the national level, we have lost our common meeting places and our common narrative. It’s difficult to have a conversation when there’s no agreement on facts. And without a conversation, we become dysfunctional and break down, like a person who has given up on their health and well-being.
In Haines, we’re lucky to still have a newspaper and radio station that produce a mostly agreed-upon version of the local news. Those are the places we meet and start conversations about our town. They’re our common narrative.
As a nation, we’re late to fully understanding and appreciating the value of general-interest newspapers to the health of the communities and our body politic. Hopefully, we’re not too late.