The dying, the bitch(ing), and the newsroom.

Following closely in the footsteps of the Kübler-Ross model of grieving, for years the newspaper industry has remained steadfastly stuck between Denial and Anger.  Declining circulations and ad revenues in addition to a faster news cycle and more media competition had long since turned the published word into an anachronism in news coverage.  Like lumbering Dinosaurs trying to squish the furry rodents of cable news outlets and bloggers, newspapers in many cities were slow to modernize in the face of extinction.  And now for a few papers, the end has all-but officially come.

The Seattle-Post Intelligencer, the Rocky Mountain News, and likely, the San Francisco Chronicle will be turning off the printing presses soon, leaving some markets without a major daily publication.  Although newspapers have come and gone before, if the Chronicle’s Debra J. Saunders’ op-ed is any indiction, the last gasps of the dead-tree industry will be cursing the names of their antagonists:

Bloggers and e-mailers are crowing. If The Chronicle is shuttered, they’ll be dancing a jig. Many conservatives feel a warm glow at the possible demise of an institution that they believe to be failing because of liberal bias. On the far left, that same glow will satisfy those who think newspapers are not liberal enough.

As for those who only read their news online, here’s a news flash: News stories do not sprout up like Jack’s beanstalk on the Internet. To produce news, you need professionals who understand the standards needed to research, report and write on what happened. If newspapers die, reliable information dries up…

I wonder who will be around in five years to cover stories. Or what talk radio will talk about when hosts can’t just siphon from carefully researched stories because they never were written.

Newspapers are the public’s referees as to which information is credible. You can go online and read no end of fiction and smear about public figures. But when you read content in a newspaper, you consistently can rely on it.

I haven’t been exposed to a whine that bad since I last had a glass from Francis Ford Coppola’s vineyard.

Saunders, the paper’s token conservative who must feel like Charlton Heston in the Omega Man by living in San Francisco, is certainly entitled to mash a few sour grapes as she’ll likely be looking for employment before too long.  But Saunders’ defense of her industry, invoking every trope of “gatekeepers” and similar nonsense, looks like it was cut and pasted from a column in 1998 – and would have been just as out of date then as it is now.

To give Saunders her due, the demise of the Chronicle and her siblings has more to do with a flawed business model and the competition of a free market system than liberal bias.  Indeed, a conservative newspaper run in the same manner would be equally insolvent.  But the industry has repeatedly disgraced itself over the years with fraudulent stories, biased reporters, and coverage rabid in criticism of conservative policies while toothless in the face of liberal ones.  Against this backdrop, Saunders’ claim that “in the middle of an economic crisis and President Obama’s federal spending bonanza, there will be fewer watchdogs to guard the shop” is laughable in the extreme as the “watchdogs” long since proved themselves to be lapdogs for those administrations they favor.

The symbiotic relationship between the press and bloggers will continue whether newspapers exist or not.  The 24-hour cable networks will continue to provide coverage and fodder every bit as “carefully researched” as the print media’s.  And while blogs will never displace the “mainstream media” as direct reporters of information, they will still provide an important role as a counterbalance in coverage and as a “watchdog” of the “watchdogs.”

No one, conservative or liberal, should be cheering for anyone getting laid off – especially in this climate.  But Saunders represents an outdated and deeply flawed media industry that is destined to contract.  And her angry last words suggest she, like many of her national counterparts, still don’t understand why.