The Demise of the Small town newspaper is at hand.

So my time as a writer for the Monitor is running out. The proverbial clock is ticking on the life span of the paper and the word has finally come down that when the clock strikes midnight of December 31 the Monitor Herald will become extinct. That is sad for a newspaper that is so old. And it’s sad for me and the other columnists that have been given the privilege of having our stories published week after week.

What exactly does a newspaper do anyway? What is its purpose in the grand scheme of things? To deliver the news to your doorstep…correct? Wrong! Perhaps decades ago that was the intent and purpose but the advancement of the electronic age took care of that. There is news to be found on every television station at most any time of the day now. There is the internet that gives even more up to date news information. The Newspapers are not in the business of selling you, the reader, the NEWS. They are about selling advertising and writers like me are just filling in white space between those ads.

That is a harsh thing for me to say about myself and other writers but it is the cold ugly truth. The consumers that buy newspapers don’t pay for news. They have never paid for the news. Newspapers make their money not from delivering the news but from delivering advertising on newsprint into people’s homes. Just like television stations don’t make money off of those weekly programs that we all love to watch and are addicted too. It’s those pesky ads that intrude upon our senses and plant the idea that we need to run to J.C. Penny’s and get some new linens for our beds or to go to Kroger for their 10 for 10 deals of the week. I used to work at both of the TV stations in our area and for a national advertising agency and I had to churn out creative story boards for commercials on a daily basis. It is a dog eat dog world in the world of advertising in both the video and print genre.

Now I can’t say what it costs to print a paper and deliver it to the paper boxes and to the post office but I dare say it’s a lot more than the .25 cents or .50 cents people have been paying. Think about it for a moment, and you will realize those paltry sums couldn’t come close to making up the cost of merely printing a newspaper and then delivering it by hand to a subscriber’s doorstep seven times a week, 365 days a year.

Nor can a company make money in 50-cent increments by sending employees out in gas-guzzling trucks down country roads each day or once a week distributing to hundreds of newspaper boxes over scores, perhaps hundreds, of square miles. I dare to offer that it may actually cost $25 to $40 dollars a paper to print and deliver just one paper that we have all had the luxury of paying about $21 to $28 dollars a year for.

I realized a few years back that times were getting tight with newspapers when they started going to a smaller type and a slightly smaller size and format. Little by little our newspapers and magazines have been shrinking. The comics, the way to lure younger people into reading a paper, started getting smaller. Then some papers, in the hopes that they would not offend anyone, started reporting what I call the ‘happy talk news’. Nothing too too controversial. After all, you don’t want to tick off the advertisers. The advertisers are the bread and butter of the papers. And I don’t want this to seem like I am attacking the businesse’s that buy advertising. Heavens NO! I used to be a business owner and I had to advertise to get new customers. I can’t begin to tell you how much I spent on print advertising trying to target my market.

Newspapers don’t have the comfortable monopoly position any longer. People get their news in many different ways now and that is what is leading to the demise of the smaller local papers. Young people don’t read any more like the past generations. Try as we might, it’s hard to grab the attention of some people unless its in a video format.

What will become of papers and journalists and writers in general? I don’t have a clue. I just know that I am a dinosaur that continues to evolve and I am not too technologically challenged. Perhaps the papers and reporters and journalists that survive will come out on the other side of the technology universe and be the better for it.

As for my writing, I may not be appearing in ink on newsprint for much longer but I will still have my internet blog and I thank the Monitor for giving me the venue to express my opinions. It has been a great learning and growing experience for me.

Now is anyone out there looking for a feature writer?