Get your copy of our weekly print products at any of these convenient locations.

The Times, and times, they are a-changin'

Jane Burns  —  4/22/2008 7:53 am

Last fall, many of my friends gathered for a party to mark the 25th anniversary of the demise of the Des Moines Tribune.

The Tribune was an energetic afternoon newspaper that did great work but had circulation figures that increasingly paled in comparison with its morning competition, the Des Moines Register. I was just a college student then at Drake University in Des Moines, and many of our class discussions were about the fate of the Trib and the future of our business.

The reason many of the former Trib staffers are my friends is because they ended up at the Des Moines Register, where I became an intern shortly after the death of the afternoon newspaper and stayed for another 17 years.

It warms my heart that they consider me a member of the Trib family even if I never worked there. Unfortunately, in some ways, I'm now getting to experience this for myself all these years later.

On Saturday, the last daily edition of The Capital Times goes to press. But because of our company's unique business plan and the onset of further technology, we don't have to suffer the same fate as the Des Moines Tribune. The Capital Times will still print twice a week and continue as a daily online presence.

That's the good news, and the part that gets discussed as an exciting time in our paper's history. That's all well and good, and I might be a little more excited after the sadness subsides of watching so many of my co-workers walk out the door.

Because as intriguing as this step into the new media age might be, the fact is we wouldn't be doing it if as many people were buying the newspaper as they used to. People might be getting their news online, and are certainly advertising more online, but papers were dying well before this thing called the Internet was invented.

That's not just an issue with The Capital Times. Heck, it's not even just a media issue. Indifference is a cultural issue, the result of which we experience in so many ways on a daily basis.

Even here, in this city in which people like to consider themselves plugged in and engaged, getting people to buy the newspaper -- either daily newspaper -- is a real struggle. We pride ourselves on buying local and sustainable products here, yet somehow that doesn't translate into media.

As these final weeks of the Cap Times daily wound down, I found myself getting snitty. "I can't imagine this city without the Cap Times," well-meaning people say to me. "Do you subscribe?" I respond, and the answer has mostly been "no." Co-workers have told me of earnest supporters who ask about a fund to donate to in order to help keep the Cap Times viable. They don't want to subscribe, but want to help. They couldn't see the connection.

And readers wonder why newspapers are trying everything and anything to stay solvent. Sometimes it's like we're trying to sell a flashy new car to people who can't drive.

You can look at our government and all the troubles and scandals and say, "How did we get into this mess?" Sure you can blame Republicans or Democrats, but you can also blame the voting percentages. Our leaders can connect Iraq to 9/11 all they want because too much of the public can't bother to become informed enough to know the difference.

That's not to say the media are blameless for driving away viewers or readers, from the glut of celebrity news to the ways they failed to question the run-up to Iraq. Nor are the media blameless in the way that the owners have changed their priorities from public service to profit-making, which has created monopolies, mistrust and timidity.

But this paper is not corporate-owned and did question the war, showing the kind of skepticism people scream that they want from their media. Yet it wasn't enough to save our current format.

Perhaps this is where the Internet can truly be a friend to all of us. The rise of citizen journalism and involvement and limitless boundaries for news should be ways to get the truth out there, particularly if it can be harnessed in such a way as to be less random and credible enough that readers can believe what they are reading.

That's a path down which the new Capital Times can lead our readers, a path that online magazines like Salon and Slate have forged impressively, but we'll have the added bonus of a hands-on paper to accompany it. The paper part is important in this. The Washington Post recently won a Pulitzer Prize for its expose on conditions at Walter Reed Hospital. As much as that coverage deserved the Pulitzer, the fact is Salon had reported on it two years earlier. The differences? A newspaper in hand and an established brand name.

"See you in the funny papers," is how friends said goodbye in decades past. We don't have to say that, because besides those two papers a week, the Cap Times will see you online.

 

Jane Burns  —  4/22/2008 7:53 am