The Dead Issue

 I always looked forward to reading a hard copy of my daily community newspaper over a cuppa every morning. Those days are gone. It was the beginning of the end for the print media when News Corp announced that their community newspapers would no longer be audited allowing them, according to media analysts, to cut unprofitable circulation and save costs. Cutting costs didn't stop there. Daily newspapers became bi-weeklies. As a result, journalists and photographers were retrenched and the print media lost its ability to pursue news accurately and rigorously. Advertising dollars took precedent over news space, and as a consequence most newspapers became nothing more than advertising leaflets. Here is my letter to the editor that, not surprisingly, was never published. "The Manly Daily cannot be considered a newspaper anymore. It’s patently obvious that your so called daily community newspaper has cut costs to the bone so that it is now unrecognisable as a news paper. The Manly Sea Eagles were robbed over the weekend, and yet there was not one mention in Wednesday’s edition about it. Your newspaper is dying a slow and inevitable death, so just do us all a favour. I’m an award winning print journalist, and I know the signs. I realize this letter won’t be published but pass it onto the editor anyway, and then onto management."

 

There is a truism in journalism that one letter to a newspaper editor is representative of what thousands of other people are thinking.The reality is that everything is going digital, and it won’t be long before magazines and newspapers do a final print run, and books too become obsolete.

 

NEWS FLASH! The COVID-19 pandemic which killed thousands of people as it spread like wildfire around the globe in 2020 has also effectively killed off community newspapers across the country. The Manly Daily went digital, but many others closed their doors for good as publishers considered newsprint unviable during the lockdown. The writing, for print journalism, was on the wall. It was the end of an era. I’ll miss the feel of newsprint, and chasing a copy of my local rag down the road.