(Niagara At Large is positing this piece with the permission of Truthdig, a great and edgy online news and commentary site based in California that you should check out. This piece, originally posted June 27, 2011, just about says it all about the sad state of newspapers today in both the United States and Canada.)
By Chris Hedges
I visited the Hartford Courant as a high school student. It was the first time I was in a newsroom. The Connecticut paper’s newsroom, the size of a city block, was packed with rows of metal desks, most piled high with newspapers and notebooks.
Reporters banged furiously on heavy typewriters set amid tangled phone cords, overflowing ashtrays, dirty coffee mugs and stacks of paper, many of which were in sloping piles on the floor.
The din and clamor, the incessantly ringing phones, the haze of cigarette and cigar smoke that lay over the feverish hive, the hoarse shouts, the bustle and movement of reporters, most in disheveled coats and ties, made it seem an exotic, living organism. I was infatuated. I dreamed of entering this fraternity, which I eventually did, for more than two decades writing for The Dallas Morning News, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor and, finally, The New York Times, where I spent most of my career as a foreign correspondent.
Newsrooms today are anemic and forlorn wastelands. I was recently in the newsroom at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and patches of the floor, also the size of a city block, were open space or given over to rows of empty desks.
To read the whole article go to your search engine and plug in the words truthdig, Chris Hedges and Gone with the Papers. Unfortunately NAL is having some technical accessing the following link from this site. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/gone_with_the_papers_20110627/
Niagara At Large 
I can totally relate. I worked for a small local newspaper in Buffalo and everything, including the layout of the newspaper was done by hand. Hours were spent with wax spreaders laying out copy done on what was called a “Veritype” machine; graphics were cut from pages provided by a subscription service; headlines were printed ; photos were developed and attached. No colour pictures then. Lots of people were needed to put the tabloid-sized newspaper to bed. Then it was hand delivered to the printer and picked up for distribution. So much has changed, but I believe the biggest change is the lack of real investigative journalism. Everything has to be in easy to read bullet points with lots of pictures. Back in the day, the content was cleaner and clearer, the pictures told a better story and, because the vast amount of time that it took to put together, there weren’t that many ridiculous, salacious stories in evidence. When you had to double type everything in order to have it come out in neat columns, you did not waste a lot of time and space with flowery language. Too bad modern journalism students do not have to see or experience that type of publishing. It’s so much easier now. With a computer and a digital camera, anyone can publish a newspaper.
BTW, my late uncle was the drama critic for the Hartford Courant.
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Newspapers were never for “truth”. They are an advertising medium, with editorial content around to justify the ads.
And that editorial content was always biased. To use Kanuk examples, The Toronto Red Star… Gob and Pail and others were constant cheerleaders for the Lieberal party.
Craigslist and kijiji are to printed newspapers what push button elevator controls were to the elevator operators union.
Now that most under 30 are functionally illiterate, thumb-typing, game-playing, phone watchers, newspapers will die. Yes it’s sad.
And welcome at the same time.
The Interweb has connected us better than ever. No longer do editors play the role of kings, deciding which stories the public sees. I’m all for that.
For example, the Newsweek editor spiked (a print term) the Monica Lewinsky-Slick Willie Clinton story. Like most editors, that one was a Democrat, or at least left-leaning. Matt Drudge ran it, from his mother’s basement or wherever. Today Drudge is a millionaire, while money-losing Newsweek was sold for a dollar.
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