When I was growing up there seemed to be newspapers everywhere. There were morning newspapers and evening newspapers. My mother read one newspaper; my father read another. In addition to multiple daily papers that were sold from newsstands, candy stores, and subway kiosks everywhere, there were weekly newspapers. Kids on bicycles tossed papers at the front doors and upstairs porches of houses all over town. Some papers had a liberal view, others a centrist bent, and still others a conservative direction; and they were published in many languages, serving the melting pot of the city. My grandparents read in Yiddish in addition to English; my neighbors found the ones in Polish. Newspapers were part of the fabric of the city, holding neighborhoods together and giving the city its texture. For the large immigrant community, reading newspapers was an introduction to America — to politics, sports, idiomatic expressions, entertainment, business, and the outrage expressed in headlines.
During my freshman year at Columbia, a professor took me aside and suggested if I wanted to make the most of my college years, I should read The New York Times as thoroughly and frequently as I could; it would be a good use of my time, he said. Perhaps he saw this as a way to make first-generation boys from Brooklyn into men from Manhattan. I was eager in those days to fit in and I believed if I followed his advice I might leave Morningside Heights not only educated and up to date, but well ahead of most of the competition. I began to read the papers but the requirements from my course work made it almost impossible to keep to my newspaper regimen and I confess I never quite achieved my goal. Nevertheless, newspapers became a regular part of my life and I was dismayed over the years to see them begin to decline in number. Newspaper after newspaper folded.
I understand that back in the day there was only radio to compete with the printed word and after television appeared there was inevitably less time to read. What you saw on the screen seemed so immediate and animated, whereas the world in black and white began to grow disappointingly drab. Now, of course, the proliferation of electronic media in all formats, sizes, sights, and sounds, hardly gives newsprint a chance to breathe.
To this day, however, I continue to wake up each morning looking forward to opening my newspapers — daily and weekly ones. I like the feel of the paper. But then again, I’m a nostalgic kind of guy. And truth be told, even before I go downstairs to retrieve the papers at the front door, my wife and I have been online to see if there is a particular headline, special article, column, or editorial that we need to be aware of from the local as well as the national press. We jump from site to site not as a substitute for the newsprint editions but in addition to them.
As a university president, I worried that students seemed increasingly inattentive to newspapers — and to the news in general. And following the lead of my Columbia freshman professor, I decided to do something about it. Like the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike, I launched a program to provide newspapers to GW resident students, free of charge. I thought if we brought the newspapers to the lobby of the dormitories and gave them away, surely they would be read. And with the help of colleagues we made it so.
At first it actually seemed to work. But as the novelty wore off, we discovered that at the end of the day we frequently had almost as many newspapers in the bins as had been there at the start. In time this seemed wasteful of money and probably ecologically unsound. A lot of newsprint and ink were going to naught. After a few years, we decided to put an end to the newspaper program. We did so reluctantly but we were resigned to a 21st-century reality in which students get their news electronically, if they get it at all.
To our astonishment, the termination of free newspapers was greeted by an outcry; there were complaints by students, including one in the student newspaper — the Hatchet (an infelicitous name, but if you recall that I am at The George Washington University its source will become apparent). The amount at issue was $50,000, not a trivial sum. But in the larger scheme of the university budget, this line item seemed a worthwhile investment if it achieved its goal, so after a brief hiatus we restored the free newspapers, only to discover in the following year that nothing much had really changed: Stacks of newspapers were left unread. The die-hards were vocal but not numerous. And so, sadly, the program, again, was terminated.
Last week, as I was getting a post-racquetball coffee and donut, I saw posted notices — headlined, “Extra-Extra” — which indicated that free newspapers were available at the top of the stairs in machines. Two years after the “second termination” students once again have access to free newspapers. I confess I am delighted as I trust are Donald Graham and Arthur Sulzberger. I know that newspaper readership is going down all over the country but I’m pleased at least on my campus, it is not going down without a fight.
Image from Photobucket.com
