The Enduring Value — And Vanishing Presence — Of America’s Newspapers
(ANALYSIS) In these precarious times for America’s newspaper industry, last week’s big entertainment buzz involved Peacock’s new situation comedy “The Paper,” which revives the creators’ beloved mockumentary style in “The Office.” The timely plot portrays a pathetic Toledo newspaper with a skinflint owner as it seeks past legitimacy. Compare that with, say, the swagger of the TV city room saga “Lou Grant.”
Despite some major differences, newspapers and religion share notable similarities in their societal roles, including defining norms, creating a sense of a shared community, while maintaining rituals. These parallels are often rooted in the human need to make sense of a complex world.
And show business tributes to newspapers’ centrality in American culture stimulate some nostalgia.
READ: How Covering Pope John Paul II’s 1999 Visit To St. Louis Changed My Journalism Career
Turning to film, “The Paper” is also the title of a clever dramedy whose energy evokes “The Front Page,” the classic 1928 press-room stage comedy and its movie, radio and TV adaptations. The 1994 plot covers 24 hours at a New York City tabloid facing economic challenges. Talk about a cast: Michael Keaton as the city editor is joined by Jason Alexander, Glenn Close, Robert Duvall, Spalding Gray, Jill Hennessy, Randy Quaid, Jason Robards and Marisa Tomei.
Famously, the true-to-life “All The President’s Men” from 1976 glorifies newspapering in general and The Washington Post in particular. Here Robards plays Executive Editor Ben Bradlee, with Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford as the “Wood-Stein team” whose Watergate reportage ended in President Nixon’s 1974 resignation.
That newspaper’s heroics rate equal star power in “The Post” from 2017 with director Steven Spielberg enlisting Tom Hanks as Bradlee and Meryl Streep as Publisher Katherine Graham. This film recounts the Post’s 1971 defiance of Nixon to publish the “Pentagon Papers” on Vietnam War secrets. Yet, in 2025, the capital’s once-regnant daily is suffering turmoil and more layoffs as weekday circulation dips below 100,000 for the first time in decades.
The New York Times gets its due in the 2022 film “She Said,” recounting its 2017 Harvey Weinstein investigation that launched the #MeToo movement. And of course, Religion Unplugged must spotlight “Spotlight” from 2015, a realistic portrayal of newspapering that took the Best Picture Oscar. Keaton (again!) plays the editor running the Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2002 investigation of sexual predation by Catholic priests. (The Globe is apparently faring better than the Post these days).
Speaking of Boston, 335 years ago, its Publick Occurrences became America’s first newspaper — and was exterminated days later by the irritated colonial governor. Are schoolkids still taught that in 1734-1735 courageous newspaperman John Peter Zenger laid ground for freedom of the press in our Bill of Rights? He spent months in prison for attacking New York’s colonial governor — until a jury acquitted him of libel because the articles were truthful. That remains the primary defense against libel to this day.
Do youths know that from 1729 Benjamin Franklin built his Pennsylvania Gazette into the American colonies’ most important newspaper? Or that The Associated Press cooperative wire service originated in 1846, two years after the telegraph appeared? Or that in 1884 German immigrant Ottmar Mergenthaler revolutionized printing with his fast and cheap “hot lead” Linotype machine? Or that the “yellow journalism” of competing Hearst and Pulitzer dailies helped rally support for the 1898 war against Spain that made America a world power controlling Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guam and the Philippines?
In the 20th century, printed newspapers continued to succeed despite the advent of nightly network radio newscasts (CBS in 1931), then TV equivalents (again CBS in 1949), then more troublesome competition from 24/7/365 cable TV news (CNN in 1980). Vastly more devastating consequences occurred when millions were lured from newspapers to rely upon the informational chaos online. Yet as recently as 2001, only 3% of Internet users said they got most of their information about the 9/11 attacks from the Internet.
Today, cities are fortunate to have one print newspaper, whereas many once had two competitors, one leaning right and one leaning left, with community-minded owners minus remote hedge funds. Chicago boasted four, the venerable Tribune (lately afflicted with shakeups and staff cuts), Hearst’s American (defunct in 1974), the distinguished Daily News (gone in 1978 despite 13 Pulitzers), and the tabloid Sun-Times (whose 2022 switch to non-profit charity status may be a path to newspaper survival).
In 2001, the nation’s oldest continuing daily, the New York Post, reprinted the first edition to mark its 200th anniversary. Much of page one displayed brief announcements of where and when ships were arriving and departing with what cargo — vital data for the bustling port city. Behold, classified advertisements, a crucial source of revenue for publishers and of essential data for job-seekers, house-hunters, and sellers of cars and household items. The industry’s 21st century crisis was crystallized in 2000 when Craigslist’s online classified ads began expanding from San Francisco to other cities.
Apart from millions of important news articles, the great American newspaper otherwise had an information monopoly that the Internet abolished. Dailies once printed all programs on each local radio station. Later, Sunday inserts provided the week’s TV listings. The same for public events, movie times, weddings and (recently dropped by The New York Times) sports scores and standings. The “birthers,” who claimed Barack Obama’s birth certificate was fraudulent so he was an illegal president, were refuted via archived microfilm birth listings in the Honolulu Advertiser. Printed government notices are a legally required remnant of that era.
Last February, Newark’s Star-Ledger, arguably considered New Jersey’s paper of record, and the Trenton Times, the capital’s valiant muckraker, ended print editions and went all-digital. On New Year’s Eve, presses will roll for the final time at the Journal-Constitution, which originated in war-ravaged Atlanta in 1868. Others will follow, though there’s no prospect that heavyweights like The New York Times and Wall Street Journal would go digital-only and cease printed editions. Newspapers’ old subscription-and-advertising model still produces far more income than their online subsidiaries.
A sampling of all-too-familiar grim realities. Pew Research Center’s latest annual accounting showed 6% of U.S. adults “often” get news from print media plus 19% saying “sometimes,” a new low that compared with 57% plus 29% for digital media. The Labor Department reported that newspaper employment (print plus digital) was 455,000 in 1990, 260,800 in 2010 and only 173,700 by 2016. Average weekday circulation was 63.2 million in 1990 and 24.3 million by 2021, the lowest since World War Two. Print advertising income far exceeds digital, with total ad income plummeted from $49 billion to only $18 billion during the 21st Century that has seen more than 2,000 daily and weekly newspapers go out of business.
Something palpable is missing when a metropolitan area lacks a printed newspaper. Physical print displays neatly offer comparative evaluation of news items, sidebars, photographs, maps, charts and cartoons.
Most importantly, the internet is handy for news headlines and quick data but print media excel at the absorbing of substantive material. So spurn cultural fashion, brew coffee, take an easy chair and enjoy today’s edition. And don’t forget to renew your subscription!
Richard N. Ostling was a longtime religion writer with The Associated Press and with Time magazine, where he produced 23 cover stories, as well as a Time senior correspondent providing field reportage for dozens of major articles. He is a recipient of the Religion News Association's Lifetime Achievement Award. He has interviewed such personalities as Billy Graham, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI); ranking rabbis and Muslim leaders; and authorities on other faiths; as well as numerous ordinary believers. He writes a bi-weekly column for Religion Unplugged.