Robin Agnew
This week our local paper, The Ann Arbor News, announced that it wil cease publication this July, going to a two day a week print edition, but focusing most of their energies online. They join the venerable Detroit Free Press and Detroit News, who are also reducing the number of print editions they publish (down to three days a week) and increasing their online presence.
Today I read an article about the fact that Braille is dying out - with new voice technology, fewer blind people know how to read Braille, saying it's too "difficult". It's been proven, however, that a familiarity with Braille increases the odds of both higher education and employment for the blind, as well as just plain literacy.
This week I listened to a piece on NPR about the Kindle. That piece was so depressing I had to turn off the radio. One of the things that bugs me about the Kindle is that many books can now be accessed for free - and so, like music, people are going to be expecting something for nothing.
These are all (it seems to me) giant changes and it speaks to the fact that our society, instead of becoming more literate and better educated is becoming less so, and the tools that enable this decline are so omnipresent that, like the frog in the water that slowly begins to boil, we haven't noticed until it's too late.
I've heard many of my fellow booksellers complain (lament?) that we are now dinosaurs - what will happen to the book business? News distribution? Reading? Education? If I knew the answer, of course, I'd be rich. What I do know is that reading is a quiet, thoughtful activity that takes some concentration and intellectual engagement. The necessary level of concentration is something our busy, noisy world offers very little of.
What's selling books these days are events and the fact that bookstores are a place for social interaction (our book club nights are usually the busiest of the month). Whatever gets people in the door and on their way with a book is a good thing. I do worry that my customer base is on the older side - with some exceptions.
And The Ann Arbor News? It may not have been the greatest paper on the planet, but it was the only paper (aside from the University of Michigan's Michigan Daily) that wrote about my hometown. Downtown, this week, seems like it's been in mourning for the News. Every customer has mentioned it - as one older lady with no computer lamented, "How will I read the obituaries?" It's not only the loss of a landmark business that's been around for more than 170 years and a loss of over 200 jobs, but it's also the loss of something more intangible. Something we should all be thinking about.
When I first heard about Kindles, I laughed out loud. Ridiculous to think that book lovers would even consider such a thing. A kids' toy.
I no longer laugh. The kids are changing our world at an alarming pace.
May their battery packs fail en masse.
Posted by: Roy Innes | March 28, 2009 at 02:12 PM
I am just this side of distraught over the impending death of newspapers. I think something very important is being replaced by something more convenient and less effective.
Posted by: Jeff Cohen | March 28, 2009 at 03:20 PM
More convenient and more...annoying. I have a "subsription" to the Detroit Free Press online and it is so not the same.
Posted by: Robin Agnew | March 28, 2009 at 06:13 PM
What worries me especially is how will investigative journalism continue? Where will the incentive be to spend weeks or months covering these stories? I guess this new world will leave us behind.
Posted by: Patricia Abbott | March 28, 2009 at 06:39 PM
Me too - just think, Kwame Kilpatrick might still be in office if not for the Free Press. Also foreign news bureaus - what happens to them?
Posted by: Robin Agnew | March 29, 2009 at 08:25 AM