OneMind

(Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of three posts on this subject that will appear in this space. Part One appeared Jan. 18. I’m breaking it up to keep any one post from becoming overwhelmingly long.)

The 24-hour cable news cycle combined with the Internet have rendered the coverage of worldwide news an activity to which the print media are simply and innately unable to engage. The delay inherent in publishing the dead-tree version of the news is an inelastic and unforgiving reality. I don’t know about anyone else but even as a life-long reader, long-time career print journalist and near worshipper of the newspaper world, I have long since stopped relying primarily on my local newspaper for world and national news. Long before the San Jose Mercury-News and the Monterey County Herald — the two newspapers I’d consider “local” to me — have been put to bed and are streaming off their presses, I have already read all of the national and global news they are likely to contain. I’ve read that news on multiple sites with multiple perspectives, probably formed any judgment I’m going to make on it, and read late-breaking updates the newspapers won’t get to until tomorrow, if they get to them at all.

It is time the newspaper world woke up to this harsh reality.

But this needn’t spell the end of the need for newspapers. Far from it. I still turn to the Monterey paper for one thing: local news. And the notion of “local news” is far broader than might be obvious. I want to hear about schools and local politics, high school and amateur sports, concerts, special events and a host of other things going on in my community. I also want to read local angles on those big, breaking national and international news stories. In addition, I find myself interested in reading local readers’ and columnists’ opinions about those world and national events if only because it keeps me in touch with the pulse of the community in which I live.

In other words, I love what is local about my local paper. For the rest, I could not care much less. I would pay for this news. Why? Because I cannot get it free at a dozen or hundreds of Web sites. Because it’s important to me. And because by supporting a truly local news outlet, I’m contributing to the good of my community. I would patronize advertisers who supported this local newspaper. Immediacy is seldom important with this news.

I know I’m not alone in this. I don’ know how widespread the feeling is, but i do know that many others with whom I’ve discussed this idea are enthusiastic supporters of it. I am totally uninterested in reading yet another wire story about the earthquake in Haiti in my local paper. I would, however, like to read about local folks with Haitian families and connections and how they are handling the news, what their families are telling them. Stuff I couldn’t get in the metro dailies of other cities and states.

It is perfectly possible for local newspapers to become purely local again. They can rid themselves of a substantial portion of their paid editorial staffs or convert them to stringers who are paid only when they bring stories of real value and import to the paper. They can hire local “correspondents” to report news of neighborhoods, individual schools, clubs, organizations, events. Local churches could provide information about their weekly services and the papers would have room for this material, which would be well-read. They could reduce ad rates to a level that all local businesses could afford. I suspect they could generate far higher profit margins even if on smaller revenue streams. They could become viable and vital.

Weekly newspapers all over the country are doing just this. And few if any of them are in trouble today. Why? Because their communities of readers aren’t likely to let them close. They are seen as an essential part of the local scene.

This way lies success.

The decision by the United States Supreme Corporatists today that allows corporations unbridled rights to interfere financially in political campaigns signals the death knell of democracy as we know it. And that may be an understatement.

Unless Congress finds a way legislatively to fix this problem — and to do so before the mid-term elections which Corporate America will buy lock stock and barrel — it is time to consider moving to another country. Seriously. I have so advised my family.

Conservatives are fond of prattling on about “activist judges” who change things in ways they don’t like but these idiots have just overturned two previous court decisions and 30 years of settled law without a single legal justification. They could and should have ruled in a much narrower sense as is the Court’s usual wont. If they had confined themselves to the free speech issues raised in the case before them, they would have been able to set up a proper discussion in the Congress of the roles of corporations in the political process. Instead, they have all but guaranteed that fascism — corporate ownership of governance — will be the new reality of America this year.

As Keith Olbermann said on msnbc’s “Countdown” tonight, “Democracy was great while it lasted.”