Future News Without Printed Words?

Perhaps someday, like in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, people will no longer be reading the printed word.

The science fiction story occurs to me in grim moments when news items increasingly appear about the demise of major city newspapers in the United States:  closings, bankruptcies, layoffs or ceasing print publication in favor on online-only formats.

A lot is being written and will be written about how newspapers are struggling with new business models in the Internet age, how blogging and Web sites are displacing the established news media and how print journalism publishers are dinosaurs. The latter charge is not necessarily gloating among the accusers, because they display a common worry involving journalism itself.

All this and more is probably true, but another underlying truth is that many people – among Americans at least – are reading less and less of words printed on paper.  And what they do read – online or elsewhere – they don’t want to pay for.

The evidence has been around a long time and is accelerating. Few of us can deny that print newspapers and news magazines decades ago were already being considered as endangered species due to the electronic mass media – first radio, then television, then cable. Along comes the Internet these days and some regard the development practically as a coup de grâce for newspapers.

A survey released in December 2008 by the Pew Research Center illustrates what is happening. It said that the Internet, which emerged in 2008 as a leading source for campaign news, had surpassed all other media except TV as an outlet for national and international news (Pew Research Center chart follows).

Alleviating our worries somewhat, Americans younger than 30 claimed slight increases for newspapers, magazines and radio as news sources – so maybe reading won’t die out?

Pew, nevertheless, also stated that nearly six-in-ten within this younger crowd said they get most of their national and international news online; an identical percentage cited TV, but the TV figure was less than in a similar 2007 survey. One could also wonder if the news being gleaned online is even necessarily displayed on the screen for reading – it could be a lot of videos.

There are probably comparable online trends concerning local, county and state news, but more data may be needed; anecdotal evidence suggests the same dire situation for newspapers, however.

In addition, although I’m not knowledgeable about actual book sales, past surveys by Gallup and others have underlined that Americans are reading less, especially books.  An Associated Press-Ipsos poll released in August 2007 said one in four U.S. adults say they read no books at all in the past year.

The National Endowment for the Arts published a 99-page study in November 2007 concluding that Americans in general are spending less time reading and their reading comprehension skills are eroding. It drilled deeper with disappointing findings about young adults and teenagers.

Finally, we have also heard that when it comes to reading tests for college-bound students, average SAT scores remained flat in 2008 after a couple of years of declines while average ACT scores showed a slight decrease.

But we don’t want to review all the evidence in order to simply condemn our reading habits – or lack thereof; instead, we might speculate and conjecture on a couple of points surrounding such an issue:  online news itself may not involve only reading because of the video content available and future news sources may not involve any reading at all.

Radio news, according to the Pew survey, remains relatively strong and that involves no reading. With the exception of brief captions, news locations and reporters’ names that are broadcast on the bottoms of TV screens, all viewers really have to do is watch and listen.

This leads us to the fast growing populations of cellular telephones and other wireless devices. Right now, they have FM and digital radio capability and even mobile TV is starting to come on stream.  Hopefully mobile TV watchers will be the passengers and not the drivers, but maybe cellular handsets and other wireless devices will become the next primary sources of news – listen only, no reading needed.

Lastly, it looks like people want to get news information for free as much as possible – a great incentive for advertising-based radio, TV and online news sources. Cable is a bit confusing since news is likely to be bundled into larger subscription programming packages; besides, cable TV news also gets advertising support plus it is also online for free, so that’s a wash.

Many of us who were in the trade press long ago saw pubs based on paid reader subscriptions fall victim to controlled circulation (freebie pubs supported monetarily only by ad revenues); now controlled printed pubs are falling victim to the equally free and technology user preferable Internet news.

It can be disheartening to believe that the public wants news for free or that the news work may be worth virtually nothing to them. After all, free or worth nothing is even lower on the economic ladder than a product or service characterized by commodity pricing.

OK News People – Who Took Nasty Mortgage Loans?

All right already. We’ve seen plenty of press reports about the greedy white-collar types who benefited or tried to benefit from the bad mortgage loan environment. Yet there apparently is a black hole on stories concerning who took out those loans in the first place.

News coverage to date seems mostly fixated on the high profile guys that can be identified in the economic scandal – mortgage brokers and bankers plus sometimes-lackluster government regulators. Well there isn’t any a problem with covering these bad guys, but they are not the only ones that might be held accountable – or at least subjected to press and public scrutiny – for the whole mess. And I’m not talking about private, activist or political message blogs – I’m wondering about so-called “mainstream” media.

Unless my Internet search capabilities have suddenly gone dead, I’m just not finding published items that discuss the demographic breakdowns (if any are available) on the consumers that are also responsible. Who are they? Where are they? What was their economic status at the time they cut the deal for what turned out to be a bad mortgage loan?

If this information is not yet available nor easily available, the press should at least say that much in an effort to address such open questions – confess current ignorance. But one way or another, journalists should be pursuing this information as part of the story – who, what, when, where and why. Simply Journ101.

The pros and cons of the bail out plan details and “toxic” bank assets – as well as the bonus payments to executives from financial companies now on the taxpayer dole – are distracting editors and writers from examining who did and is doing the defaulting. It is not enough for media sources and the press to attribute the behavior and mistakes merely to “American consumers” as a whole. It is really not digging deep enough, not telling the whole story.

And I’m not interested in brief profiles and features about individual homeowner losers, but large-scale, cross-section demographics presenting the whole, larger picture.

Why be suspicious of this? Purported evidence repeated by the press points to a type of subprime loan issued to borrowers with No Income, No Job and No Assets (a.k.a. NINJA) as a central factor in the mortgage crisis. We’ve heard and read enough reports on experts, analysts and politicians who blame NINJA loans or underscore the obvious, i.e., that NINJAs were prime examples of poor lending practices during the U.S. housing bubble.

Besides NIN JA being an acronym, some definitions suggest the term also refers to borrowers defaulting on loans and disappearing like ninja fighters. So once again, who are they? Inquiring readers want to know.

PS: While we are at it, I’d also like to see more press examinations of whether any government regulations and/or legislation encouraged or fostered the poor lending practices.