Many people managing and working in the newspaper world are focused on
the transition from old to new media — from print to digital delivery
of news. But Tim Crews, editor and publisher of the Sacramento Valley Mirror,
a twice-weekly paper serving an area he describes as a “relatively
impoverished rural California country,” suggests that the urgency felt
by many publishers isn’t universal, even in the U.S. He wrote in an
e-mail message to me:
“I spend a good deal of time in the schools and around town — little
news actually occurs in the newsroom, of course — and I can tell you I
have never, ever seen an iPod, in use or not.“The Glenn County Board of Supervisors is justifying slashing library
budgets saying: ‘Everyone has a computer and buys their books online
anyway.’ Yet, in surveys that we’ve done, however informal, we find
that online ability here is, at best, 10 percent.“As small papers concentrate their energy from print to digital, I think
we are cutting off our collective noses to spite the face of community
journalism — and not fighting for the attention of readers. While the
big metro areas may be awash with digital use and dependence, the idea
that the entire world is digitally tuned in is, we think, a digital
mirage.”
