If you won’t read a newspaper on a New York City subway, where will you read it? As zeitgeist, as canary in the mine, the habits of New York subway riders signal the end of print newspapers.
Last winter, in a used bookstore, on a far-back shelf, up top, I found News Is a Verb, a book by Pete Hamill. In this slender volume, Hamill catalogs the ills of American journalism and charts the demise of newspapers, but in a highly personal way. Longtime newspaper readers will nod their heads as he lists what’s gone wrong: the everyday sensationalism of news, a lessened ability to unveil wrongdoing and provoke action, a lack of empathy and advocacy for the masses (the poor, in particular), daily stories about celebrities without valid reason, a heavy reliance on anonymous sources, general sloppiness and managerial incompetence, and so on.
Hamill doesn’t label his book a polemic but states upfront: “I can’t write about it in a cold, detached manner. Quite simply, I love newspapers and the men and women who make them. Newspapers have given me a rich, full life.” Hamill also believes all the “noble clichés” about them; this led him in part to write his book. It’s a well-intentioned effort. And Hamill knows what he’s talking about. He’s a tabloid newspaperman—now an archaic term for a tradesman, like blacksmith or guillotine operator—and he’s worked as a reporter, a rewriteman, a war correspondent, and a columnist, for the New York Post, the Daily News, and New York Newsday. He was also, briefly, the editor-in-chief of the News, and has written novels and nonfiction books.
There has been a lot of public handwringing lately about the future of newspapers: how might they survive, what might take their place. Musings in print and on blogs and elsewhere about what the future of news is and what that manifestation might mean to us—the public, the republic. In the meantime, there has been a lot of pain, many jobs lost, and careers wrecked. Hamill’s view on this important issue is interesting to me because he’s the kind of journalist we need; one that is a little harder to find these days.
In some circles journalism comes with the inferred respectability of a profession, but there was a time when journalists didn’t graduate from J-schools (just like an MFA wasn’t always thought of as a requirement to write and publish a decent novel). I.F. Stone, Jimmy Breslin, Pete Hamill, Murray Kempton: these were big-city journalists from an earlier, different era.
Hamill writes about starting out in the newspaper business. “Reporters in those days were not as well educated as they are now. Some were degenerate gamblers. Some had left wives and children in distant towns, or told husbands they were going for a bottle of milk and ended up back on night rewrite on a different coast.” He adds: “Some were tough veterans of the depression and World War II and were sour on the whole damned human race. But all of them were serious about the craft.” (This is not to say there aren’t good reporters today; there are. But they’re a different breed. Take Hamill’s word for it.)
Nevertheless, in reading News Is a Verb, I was most interested in a section in which Hamill discusses the habits of the average New York City commuter; laments the end of what was for decades a daily part of New York life: reading newspapers on the subway. In my mind, I can picture the New York City subway system in black-and-white photographs I’d seen somewhere, men in hats, reading the New York World-Telegram and the Brooklyn Eagle. I can also see poor-resolution color photos in which women wearing pantsuits and men with Afros ride graffiti-marred cars and read the Post and the News, back when those dailies had no color print. I’d only recently stopped reading newspapers on the train myself, but decided to take a closer look—take a sampling, if you will, like a reporter might—by picking my head up from the book I’m reading and looking around at my fellow straphangers. Like a good journalist will tell you, there is a lot you can discover about a city by watching its people.
What I saw on the trains I ride is that most people listen to iPods or other mp3 players, play video games, or fiddle with their PDAs. A good percentage do puzzles and crosswords. Riders also catch up on paperwork or homework; women apply make-up; commuters sleep or try to pick one another up. Mostly though, they stare like zombies at nothing—thinking, likely, about all-too-real problems. People do read on the subway, but they mostly read—get this—books. Very few read print newspapers—a tabloid here and there, those free dailies maybe, Chinese broadsheets, a Polish tabloid, a Financial Times or a Wall Street Journal, but not many papers overall.
Just as Hamill says.
If you won’t read a newspaper on a New York City subway, where will you read it? As zeitgeist, as canary in the mine, the habits of New York subway riders signal the end of print newspapers.
Thanks a lot, Internet.
“That old vital relationship between newspaper and subway rider,” Hamill writes, “driven by the sense that you weren’t truly living in New York if you didn’t read a newspaper, is gone.”
But here’s the thing about News Is a Verb: it was published in 1998. Which means Hamill wrote it in early 1998 the latest and had probably been thinking about it long before that. In Internet terms, 1998 is the Pleistocene. Back then news appearing on the web was not to be trusted; publishing there was for amateurs. (Hamill calls Internet news “paranews” in this book.) So, while the Internet has surely had an adverse effect on print newspaper sales, it is worth remembering that it’s not the only reason for a diminished readership.
It also means my memories of newspapers are indeed memories of photographs I’d seen somewhere, because it’s been quite a while since people were crammed in a subway car reading agate type on printed paper: they’d given up on newspapers long before they’d given up on print newspapers. Hamill explains: “In the end, the readers wise up. They know that the reason their newspaper feels thin is because it is thin. The reason the newspaper feels flat and predictable is because it is flat and predictable.” Newspapers had become boring and very dumb long before 1998—even the better ones. And they’ve paid a hefty price for it.
Hamill gives the grim numbers for the business side. I could update his 1998 stats but I can’t be bothered, because (1) readers can search for this info on their own—as I noted, it’s been written about a lot lately; (2) I’m writing this essay for free; (3) it’s none of my concern whether newspapers make money or not, nor should it matter to anyone who reads them. Making money is their problem. As a reader, I’m only concerned with getting solid news and reporting, and I think I know what that is when I read it.
This is another thing that is backward today: news comes at us relentlessly, one cannot avoid it, yet we’re rarely engaged or involved in stories, beyond lurid interest or ennui, because they’re rarely told (or ignored) with the general public or—gasp—the greater good in mind.
So what to do about newspapers?
Hamill has a few suggestions—all of which seem sensible to me, as a reader, and could be applied today. Though the newspaper business is a lot different than it was a decade ago and the Internet has decimated ad and classified revenue, Hamill’s 1998 tome remains a call to action, or it might be an early obituary—I’m not sure which. But better content, as one might expect, then as now, is paramount, and it’s where newspapers ought to focus their energies. Easier said than done in this economic climate, yes, but it might be the only thing that can save them. There are other good ideas floating around, like having newspapers go the non-profit route, receive government funding, use citizen-reporters, or somehow charge for online content. Whichever way they decide to go, good readers will seek out good content. As a lifelong newspaper reader, I’ll attest to this. Figure out a way to make money after an audience is built or rebuilt and trust is gained again. Do a little praying too, if that’s your thing. Good luck.
In the meantime, New York’s newspapers persist. Tabloids of Hamill’s day—not to be confused with supermarket “tabloids”—might have been ideal for transference to the web. Tabloid wasn’t always a pejorative, Hamill notes, but rather a format. Space was tight, so every word counted. Tabloid newspapermen had to get to their point fast, images had to add to a story, and every article had to have dramatic focus. Good advice for writing for web format, and for writing for today’s attention-deficient audiences.
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The painting “Subway Riders” is by Francis Louis Mora, published in the New York Sun, December 13, 1914
