The Aegis has been around in some form or another since 1856, going on 152 years.
Many people think newspapers are on their way out. Words, pictures and advertising printed on paper supposedly are passé. The Internet's the thing, just like television and radio before it, as in the words of Paul Simon, "Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts."
People have been predicting the demise of newspapers for decades, probably at least since experimental radio station KDKA broadcast the results of the 1920 presidential election between Warren G. Harding and James Cox from the rooftop of an office building in Pittsburgh.
More than 40 years ago, in my freshman History of Journalism course in college, we discussed all sorts of new media issues and the future of newspapers. In those days, communication theory as preached by Marshall McLuhan, an observer of pop culture of the first order, was all the rage. To put it nicely, McLuhan thought newspapers had seen their day.
It also was not particularly reassuring to know Congress had not so long before passed what was known as the Failing Newspaper Act, which allowed competing publications in the same market to pool their non-editorial functions such as billing, printing and advertising, in order to cut operating costs and stay in business.
In those days, newspapers were dying off at a fast clip. Chicago, where I lived, still had four dailies, though two decades of consolidation had left them in the hands of only two owners. One afternoon paper, then owned by the predecessor to the company that now owns The Aegis and The Record, switched from a broadsheet to tabloid format in 1969 in an effort to be more hip and capture more of the younger crowd, which actually sounds familiar to some of the machinations that go on today in our industry to stave off what seems to be the inevitable. That effort folded for good less than five years later. The other afternoon newspaper, once immortalized on stage and screen — "The Front Page" and "Call Northside 777" — altered its content to be more trendy and hip for the younger set. It was put out of its misery in 1978.
When I came to Harford County in 1972, Baltimore had three daily papers, The Sun in the morning, The Evening Sun and The News American in the evening, and all three had bureaus in Harford County manned by at least one reporter, sometimes two, on a full-time basis. There were three weekly papers in Harford County, The Aegis, The Record and the Harford Democrat. Earlier in the century, both the city and the county had many more papers. Some came and went. Others merged with their competitors.
This has always been something of an up and down business. In 1986, the News American folded. Within days, the Baltimore company that owned The Sun and Evening Sun, sold out to a company in Los Angeles, which later sold out to a company in Chicago. The same year, the local company that owned The Aegis sold out to the same company that owned The Sun. Two years later, the local company that owned The Record, which had a few years earlier purchased the local company that owned the Harford Democrat and eventually merged the two, sold out to the company that owned The Aegis. The Evening Sun folded in 1995.
In 2006, Baltimore got a new daily paper, The Examiner, a free, tabloid published by a multi-billionaire who entered the media business a year or so earlier with a similar publication in Washington, D.C. It continues and does not appear to be leaving anytime soon.
For those keeping score, in my time around here we are down to two regional daily newspapers, The Sun and The Examiner, and two papers in Harford County, The Record and The Aegis, the latter two managed and produced by the same people and, with The Sun, all owned by the same company, which recently became a private company owned by its employees. Like I said, it's an up and down business.
My first experiences with the Internet and its possibilities for disseminating information — and thus altering the way newspapers do business — dates to a big regional industry show I attended in 1994, 14 years ago next month. People were saying to get on board this train, don't get left at the station. It would level the playing field of producing and distributing information. Someday soon, anyone with basic computer skills could go in the electronic publishing business. The opportunities were endless. The old ways would quickly die.
The other side to all this is the new format would also give an instant forum to all the disgruntled and downtrodden, the supposedly unheard and unlistened to, and wannabe media, economic and political movers and shakers.
Not surprisingly, the frequent targets of these so-called new media barons is the older, or, used in the pejorative, mainstream media, which have become unhip, untrendy, tired and oh so out of touch.
I don't know how many callers I have heard to radio talk shows — another hanging on type of old media format — blast The Sun and say they wish it would go away, which also means the particular radio station would then have little or no local news to report. I'm sure some readers of The Aegis are aware there at least a handful of web sites whose reason for being seems to be primarily to bash The Aegis and other aspects of the so-called establishment. "Meet the new boss...," eh, Pete Townshend?
Let's face it, that's how you get yourself heard and get an audience. You want to make a name? Offer an alternative. The easy way is to attack those who have the power. Bite the big dogs. As I noted before, the web format quickly attracts like-minded people, who, for whatever reason, have axes to grind with the incumbent messengers and have an opportunity to get their message out there in free flowing cyberspace.
Nearly a decade and a half ago, I wondered if I was seeing the beginning of the end for my line of work. It's very clear our industry has been going through a painful adjustment period. Even so, The Aegis remains strong financially, but who knows for how long? I'm the old ways. Soon I could be yesterday's news.
We say nothing lasts forever, yet information will always flow back and forth, down the street, around the corner, across the globe. People will always find new ways to communicate. It's our nature.
The one constant: People want and need to know. How they find out is still up to them.
(From a column published in The Record, Feb. 22, 2008)
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