We have an opportunity

A collective gasp emanated from newsrooms today when the Detroit News and Free Press announced they no longer will provide home delivery on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Saturdays.

Are we, as one colleague in college media put it, witnessing the death of a major newspaper? Or is this just an accelerated shift toward what all newspapers will look like in the near future?

Those of us who work in newspapers can’t imagine not having one at our breakfast tables, or at our desks when we arrive to work in the morning. But ask a roomful of college students – even journalism majors – how many of their families have a daily newspaper delivered to their homes. I’ve done this for several years, and the percentage is quickly diminishing. It’s about 33 percent in a good class, and more like 20 to 25 percent in most.

Ironically, today’s news, and last week’s bankruptcy filing by the Chicago Tribune, come at a time when the importance of watchdog reporting could not be clearer to the nation. Without pressure via diligent reporting from the Tribune and Sun-Times, would this kind of heat have reached the governor? Illinois is an international joke right now, but we’ve finally taken a step in the right direction.

Newspapers always have done a bad job of, as they say in the PR business, telling their story. We don’t spend a lot of effort promoting our importance to democracy … or the fact that we do most of the heavy lifting for our broadcast-news brethren, who then take our stories, add some superficial reporting and present them as their own.

We have an opportunity in Illinois, where this month even the least news-conscious citizens are realizing the danger of unchecked government. Newspapers have never been more important in this state. We can help illuminate the path toward good government and restored public trust.

And we can let people know we’re doing it: in our own news products, by word of mouth among opinion leaders, even by a coordinated public-service ad campaign in print, broadcast and online media.

Otherwise, citizens may not know what they have until it’s too late.