THE newspaper industry is in trouble. The decline can be tracedback to 1960, when the Reporter Dispatch in Westchester County, N.Y.,made the suicidal mistake of letting me deliver it. I was terrible atthis job. I was always late, and I could not get the hang of foldingthe papers, so when I flung them onto people's doorsteps, they lookedlike origami projects that had been regurgitated by wolves.
Newspaper circulation has been declining ever since. Things are sobad that we're thinking it might be cheaper, instead of running thepresses, to simply call our subscribers individually and read themthe parts of the paper they're interested in, which is mainly thecomics. Many of our subscribers are elderly, so we'd have to read inloud voices. ("OK, MRS. HOOBLICK, IN THE FIRST PANEL, GARFIELD HASHIS HEAD STUCK IN A SHOE. WHAT? NO, I SAID STUCK IN A SHOE. WELL,SAME TO YOU, MRS. HOOBLICK.")
We're having trouble attracting younger readers. They're notinterested in the stories we put on the front page, about the ongoingbreakdown of the Middle East peace process, which has been breakingdown for several thousand years now. In the newspaper business, wefind this absolutely riveting, but young people do not, and we haveno clue what they ARE interested in.
Oh, we try. I myself subscribe to America Online, so I can go intoInternet chat rooms and find out what young people want to know. Asfar as I can tell, they mainly want to know: (1) Am I a female? (2)If so, will I send them naked pictures?
Another major topic is Britney Spears. As far as the AmericaOnline news department is concerned, Britney is more important thannuclear proliferation. Recently, on the same day that there was amajor development in the Middle East peace-process breakdown, the bigstory on America OnLine was that - and if you didn't know this, Ihate to be the one to tell you - Britney broke up with Justin. Yes.Justin is, of course, Justin Timberlake, a member of the popular 37-year-old-boy band "In Synchronization" (or, as its fans call it forshort, "Puff Daddy").
In addition to the big breakup story, America Online had a pollwhere you could vote on what Britney should do next: (1) "Startseeing other people," (2) "Get back together with Justin," or (3)"Concentrate on her career."
("Learn to actually sing" was not an option.) Apparently, AmericaOnline subscribers care DEEPLY about this, because in just a fewhours, the poll had tallied more than half a million votes, including141,000 for "start seeing other people," all from Sen. StromThurmond.
Which brings us to the issue of bias. Another reason whynewspapers are in trouble is that the public perceives journalists asbeing more liberal than the average American. This view is based on asurvey showing that in the 2000 presidential election between Al Goreand George W. Bush, 86 percent of newspaper journalists - a muchhigher percentage than the general population - voted for Stalin.
So times are tough for the newspaper business. But there is hope,which stems from a heartwarming incident in Geneseo, Ill., reportedin a March 22 story in the Moline Dispatch, written by Matt Gergeni.The story concerns a 73-year-old woman who was buying a copy of theDispatch from a vending machine outside a Wal-Mart, when themachine's door slammed shut, trapping the woman by the neck stringsof her jacket. Unable to remove the jacket, and lacking the 50 centsshe needed to reopen the door, the woman asked a Wal-Mart employeefor help. The employee told her it was not store policy to makerefunds for the machine.
The woman spent 20 minutes hunched over in the cold before she wasable to convince the employee that she didn't want a refund, she justwanted OUT. Finally, the employee put two quarters into the machineand freed the woman, who repaid the employee. Wal-Mart laterapologized and gave the woman a $25 gift certificate, so the incidentis closed, unless of course a $700 million lawsuit is filed, which istotally possible, this being the United States of America.
But here's my point: If a relatively stupid, spring-operatednewspaper vending machine can catch and hold a customer, imagine theresults we'd get if we equipped these machines with computers,motors, wheels, stun guns, etc. We have the technology to make avending machine that can chase prospective readers for miles, knockdown their doors and refuse to take no for an answer.
What do you think, newspaper people? I think this could be thebiggest circulation-booster since we started using this special inkthat rubs off on our readers' hands and gets into their bloodstreamsand causes them to become addicted. Of course that's still a secret,so don't print this last paragraph.
Dave Barry is a humor columnist for the Miami Herald. Write to himc/o The Miami Herald, One Herald Plaza, Miami, FL 33132.
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