When my wife and I moved to Shepherd 4 years ago we signed up for home delivery of the Saginaw News and Morning Sun. Reading daily newspapers is one of my greatest leisure time activities. I took pride in the fact that I have subscribed to the Saginaw News for about 35 years.
Two weeks ago the Saginaw News called me and said they were suspending home delivery to the Mid-Michigan area. Then I heard the news that Booth Newspapers, a group of eight dailies owned by Advance Publications, of New York, will close The Ann Arbor News in July and cut daily publication to a three-day-a-week schedule at The Flint Journal, The Bay City Times and The Saginaw News in June.
This is another example of societal change. I grew up reading the daily newspaper. I remember such a feeling of accomplishment to be able to read the newspaper on my own in the second grade. I learned new words, concepts, and a deep understanding of local and world affairs. I believe that the newspaper will now disappear from our homes and people will turn even more to the world wide web for information.
As a classroom teacher I made studying the local newspaper a part of our curriculum. I believe that we face a future without newspapers. Newspapers will be replaced by online news articles. I feel this change will indirectly impact education. Newspapers and education have always gone together. Teachers will refer to newspapers in the same manner as record players, dial phones, and the telegraph.
Get my news online? I have no desire to want to read twitter feeds or sit through amateur video, laced with advertising at the beginning and end, to get the news. And I don't want a few paragraphs of blog about a council meeting. This form of "community journalism" will fail or become obsolete at some point.
I’m sure that there are many positives to this dilemma. I just don’t see it now. What do you think? Is there a positive slant that we can put on this?
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I myself get most of my news from the internet already, so at a personal level, I don't mind the change too much. However, as an educator, I think the lack of printed newspapers will have a great effect. It will do at least two things: 1) Teachers will no longer be able to use the paper as a teaching tool in younger grades because of limited computer resources and the additional skills required to read the an online newspaper. 2) Prior to using online papers, teachers will have to teach a host of skills - all of which are important and useful, but all of which add to the ever lengthen curricular requirements with which we must work. For example, I envision a need for effective web browsing and searching, (of course) reading, and even more important in the past, evaluating the reliability of your news source.
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