Page 24 - Delaware Lawyer - Fall 2023

FEATURE
of Newspapers
John Sweeney
The Death
Something vital is being lost — how can it be replaced?
The only thing surprising about the decline of newspapers has been its speed. For years, the newsroom cliché was that newspapers would be around until the last Baby Boomer disappeared. Boomers turned out to be more resilient than newspapers.
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It was inevitable — in retrospect. Ev- erybody feared “automation,” but few imagined the speed of the digital revolution. More than neighborhood paperboys vanished. Practically every industry reinvented itself or went down the drain. All of us, from presidents to retailers to mechanics, struggle to adapt.
Yet no one laments losing rotary phones or fax machines. Something new, something better took their place. Will newspapers be replaced by “some- thing new and better”? Probably not. Newspapers are more than paper and ink. They played a vital role in our com- munity life. The “something new and
better” is unlikely to fill that gap.
All of the nostalgic laments for yes- terday, or the talk about printing “good news,” will not bring back newspapers. Demographics, lifestyle changes and, above all, technology, made the daily newspaper obsolete. Not just here, but across the country. To the extent that ink-on-paper survives, it is due to habit and nostalgia. But oblivion is coming
fast.
I take no pleasure in this. I love
newspapers. I spent more than 40 years working for newspapers of various sizes. A lot of mornings I wish I still could. But, like everyone else, I keep checking