If we’re killing newspapers, do we have the responsibility to save them?

Over breakfast at the College Media Conference, the PR person for a liberal arts college I very much admire had a question for a few of the former journalists like myself who were talking about newspapers. (Whenever two or more former journalists are in the same room, the talk inevitably turns there. Yes, it’s insufferable as it sounds. Yes, I join in anyway.)

What, she wanted to know, could she do to save the small, local paper that covers the town her college is in? Buying advertising, of course, would help, but most of the students come from elsewhere, and there’s only so much money for advertisements, anyway. She buys what she can. And she subscribes, of course, for what that’s worth.

There are some variables I don’t know: who owns the paper (chain or individual), how big the circulation is, etc. This isn’t a solve for X kinda thing. Every successful paper is successful in its own way.

And anyway, that isn’t the interesting question to me. I want to know: What responsibility, if any, do outside institutions, both public and private, and citizens have to newspapers? Papers are, of course, private businesses: they exist to make a profit for their owners. But they also serve (or SHOULD serve) the public good by keeping people informed and contributing to a lively discourse about current events.

Having worked at papers that made money (sadly not many of them nor much money) and lost money, I can’t think of a single publisher who would accept help from someone outside. Of course, I also don’t know any publishers who were lining up for a newspaper bailout, but plenty of them were.

As much as we should all be concerned with keeping local businesses afloat, I don’t think anyone has a moral obligation to buy something bad or even support a poorly-run business. And face it, so many newspapers have been badly run for so long that it’s hard to have sympathy for their owners. The people who work for them and lose their jobs, sure, but not the owners. They, for the most part, did this to themselves.

The PR person’s point about good journalism being essential to a democracy is well-taken, but the news media no longer has (if it ever really did have) a monopoly on good journalism. So what can a private citizen do to help save a newspaper? Probably nothing. But he or she CAN do some things to help save journalism. Start a blog about your town. Take it seriously, attend council meetings and write about what’s happening. Don’t be a town booster or a knee-jerk contrarian. Be fair. If you see something egregious happening, write about it. Same goes for something great. Share it with your friends. Encourage them to write something or to at least share it with their friends.

So how is going to competing with a newspaper going to save it? It won’t, probably, but it might keep them honest. And it will do a few things for you: First, it will give you a new appreciation of what it takes to put out a newspaper. And second, it might help keep the idea of journalism and the spirit of public-mindedness alive. Which is why you wanted to save the newspaper in the first place, right?