We'll survive: 'Forwarders' count on us
| Saturday, May 09 2009 08:15 PM
Last Updated Saturday, May 09 2009 08:15 PM
It's undeniable: Newspapers as we know them are changing, evolving -- and in a few disheartening cases, disappearing. That empowering, comforting and occasionally aggravating bundle of processed wood pulp that lands on American driveways every morning continues to shrink, day by day -- and not just in our little corner of the world.
Meanwhile, newspapers are beefing up their online presence, exploring digital flavors-of-the-month as they grasp for The Next Thing, whatever that might be. The plan: Start building up speed now. Be ready when the economy heals. (It will.)
Free nations will always need news gatherers and disseminaters, in whatever form they might take, be they Twitter-enhanced bloggers or adaptable newsprint dinosaurs. Even mainstream media's biggest critics need independent, competently produced journalism -- that's their fodder, the foundation upon which they construct their arguments.
Here I refer not to the pundits who blog from the outskirts of the American mainstream (although they qualify too) but rather that oddly thriving community of e-mailers who perpetuate their own reality with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of "forwards," which usually originate on blogs and then take on lives of their own.
If you've got e-mail, you've read them. Maybe you've even passed along a few "forwards" yourself, as if they were well-traveled, dog-eared paperbacks -- except that e-mail allows you to turn one good book into hundreds of copies, like a latter-day miracle of the loaves and fishes.
The trouble with these "forwards," however, is that readers can and do add addendums of their own before they send them along, and soon a straightforward story becomes a fact-challenged rant. Among this ilk, stories about the military are some of the most common.
My favorite example is the story of actor Denzel Washington, who in December 2004 visited Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio and made a donation to the Fisher House, a hotel for the families of hospitalized soldiers. The e-mail I saw -- and it passed through my in-box several times over a period of years -- started and concluded with words to this effect: Why didn't the media cover Washington's visit? Was it because mainstream journalists hate the military? Gosh, maybe -- except for the fact that substantial portions of that "forward" were lifted straight from the pages of the San Antonio News-Express. That's some irony: a newspaper article about wounded soldiers becomes evidence that newspapers don't care about wounded soldiers.
Evidence of a similar transformation passed through my in-box last week. This "forward" told the story of Navy SEAL Mike Monsoor, who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously for jumping on a grenade in Iraq in 2006, saving at least three comrades. At Monsoor's funeral, fellow SEALs, having removed the gold tridents from their uniforms, slammed their pins into the wooden coffin as it passed -- a stirring tribute.
"Since the media won't make this news," one of the chain's anonymous co-authors wrote, "I choose to make it news by forwarding it." Never mind that newspapers and cable news, collectively, had already told the story in full, rich detail.
If any newspaper tells the stories of its local veterans any better than this one, I'd like to see it. Take Steven Mayer's April 7 tale of Bakersfield-bred Army medic Staff Sgt. Robert Fortner, who was awarded the Silver Star for saving several fellow soldiers on a hillside in Afghanistan -- after first digging a slug out of his own bloody shoulder. A remarkable story -- but typical of what most newspapers strive to bring their readers. But maybe someone will "forward" an embellished version of that one, too, appending the fact that The New York Times chose to ignore the story.
We'll all miss newspapers if they fail to survive this perfect storm of economic meltdown and technological metamorphosis. That includes the world's many "forward" enhancers, who'll have to stir up their indignation some other way.
Daily journalism will survive one way or another, though, I have no doubt. And we'll all benefit. No matter how we choose to repurpose the final product.
Reach Robert Price at rprice@bakersfield.com or twitter.com/stubblebuzz.
