Voice from the past, thoughts of the future
Voices from the past have a way of clarifying the future.
I’ve been thinking for weeks about what to say in reaction to the Detroit newspapers’ announcement that they’re suspending home delivery except Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays.
Then today I ran across a name from the past, which led me down a thought process that seems to be helping - at least helping me think.
The Nieman Reports, the work of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard, recently came out with a new look at the future of journalism. It’s fascinating and thoughtful and sheds little light on the future - just what you would expect.
I noticed that one of the writers’ names - Steven A. Smith - was familiar, but I couldn’t place from where. So I followed the link to his blog, “Still a Newspaperman,” and the memories came flooding back.
Steve Smith studied journalism at the University of Oregon at the same time that I was at Oregon State University. That makes us enemies, you understand. Kind of like Spartans and Wolverines. He was a Duck; I was a Beaver.
If I recall correctly, which is unlikely, since it’s a long time ago, we both worked for our respective student newspapers, and we both also wrote as correspondents or part-timers for The Oregonian, the state’s big newspaper. We were rivals of sorts.
Ironically, we both also retired from the newspaper business last year. I had some fun commenting on his blog, noting that irony.
But more valuable for me was reading a post on his blog, written just as he left his job as editor of the Spokane, Wash., Spokesman-Review. It was titled, “Still a Newspaperman,” and offered a colorful description of typical journalists of the last century, with more than a little remorse that they seem to be a dying breed.
In my response, I offered to share a toast to the journalist of the past. But I also included my fervent hope that we’ll be able to pass on to the new generation of journalists emerging in the Internet age the best of the skills and principles that motivated yesterday’s newspapermen.
What’s that have to do with the Detroit newspapers, which are shedding those old-time journalists at an alarming rate, right along with all the other mid- and big-city newspapers across the country?
Stay tuned for a future post. Steve Smith’s voice from the past pushed me off the fence. Now I know what I want to say - I just need another day or two to let it ferment.