Stop press: watch this space

My old mum came to visit last week. I'm sure at 79 she wouldn't quibble with the adjective - even though her nearly 30-years-older eyes work better than mine and the rest of her is probably in good shape too, courtesy of a fitness regime that I think of as punishing.

She line-dances ... three or four times weekly. Surely there can be nothing more punishing than Billy Ray Cyrus and co pumping and bumping away for a couple of hours on the trot.

I sit ogling a computer screen for 10 or more hours a day and blame that for my declining eyesight, especially when it comes to proof-reading (regardless of what the optometrist says). It would take more than the threat of a debilitating disease or a devastating stroke to get me out of my chair and into loud shirts and loose denim for any boot-scootin' hick-hop session - in public no less.

But I applaud her passion and energy, and hope I received her version of the longevity and vitality genes rather than my old man's, who logged off and checked out before he even reached 50.

Anyway, there we all were after tea. The conversation-killing, plasma demi-god was burbling away in episode number God-knows what of Shortland Street ... a must-watch for my ever-loving wife. Beats Campbell Live, anyway.

My son (back in the family nest) and his partner sat with their lap-tops warming their knees, twittering, facebooking and WOWing. One was also working on some programing solution, the other on a webpage design. Talk about multi-tasking.

My old mum nestled back in the sofa, engrossed in one of the clutch of books that she would never leave home without, but which probably only came out in response to the conversation close-down.

I was halfway through the Mail's level three Sudoku, searching for a breakthrough.

It struck me as a fairly typical snapshot of modern family life, even if, in this case, an extra generation was temporarily represented. There we were, drawn together perhaps in response to some dutiful social urge but effectively in our own little bubbles.

Where once there might have been the communal fun (and frustration) of Monopoly or Scrabble, or even a family line-up in front of the old black and white TV set, laughing as one at the antics of the Clampetts, now we all seem much more likely to spend rare free time after dinner doing our own thing.

The choices available, the clamour for our attention, are unprecedented. No wonder minds are boggling, if not totally boggled.

Some people have been predicting the demise of newspapers ever since the computer got personal and widely spread. The current recession, the explosion in social networking, the growing army of news-savvy bloggers and the Wild West approach to the new publishing frontier by a bewildering range of media companies, old and new, spell doom for the clunky old broadsheet, according to some commentators.

In No News is Good News, writer Jolisa Gracewood, perhaps just a little teary-eyed, blogged a near-obituary for the traditional newspaper on the popular Public Address site earlier this year.

She asks: "If a newspaper falls in a city that you don't actually live in, does it make a sound? And is it a loud whump, like a redwood hitting the earth, or the shuffling sigh of a small pile of documents swept off a desk into the recycling bin?

"Major dailies are closing across the United States. My local paper (in a university town, yet) has laid off its science reporter among other long-servers. The local ad-funded weekly, for which I review books, is feeling a little edgy. Deep thinkers are proposing entirely new business models, like endowment-funded journalism ...

"Meanwhile Time and the New York Times concede that paper news may have had its day. It's beginning to feel like the end of an era."

She's far from being alone with the doom and gloom stuff. Maybe she's right.

However, from where I sit, newspapers in this country have a few screamer headlines, searching investigations, compelling photos and late-breaking stories in them yet before the ultimate stop-press order is given from some far-off boardroom ... provided they get their content mix, tone, layout and ad ratio spot on. Provided they get ever-better at connecting with their readers (and maybe, understanding and using social networking can help with that). Provided they pursue stories that matter and demonstrate their relevance to their communities every time the presses roll.

Perhaps it is the very pressure from the proliferation of web-based publishing and social networking options that offers newspapers their greatest opportunity. As radio and television audiences fragment and are captured by web-driven, global info-tainment, the clunky old newspaper seems best equipped to function as a sort of community glue. They are one constant note amid the twittering clamour. And it is the news from its own community that the local newspaper can deliver better than anything else.

Online publications can claim audiences traditional newspapers would not dream of. Fairfax's Stuff website's most read story to date is one posted by The Nelson Mail last month - the story of the Mapua artist tackling Westpac over a mortgage. It received several hundred thousand "hits" from around New Zealand and beyond.

However, that number has little relevance to the garden shop in Richmond, appliance repairman in Nelson or bark and topsoil retailer in Stoke, who need to promote their services in a medium that circulates effectively in their own catchment area. Newspapers, which still have a very high readership rate in New Zealand, remain the most cost-effective bridge between readers and businesses. I say that not out of nostalgic wishful thinking, or because it's my job to, but because it just seems so obvious.

A barrage of headlines has been hung on a raft of newspaper closures in the United States. However, some of these are publications that emerged as the last economic bubble was already straining. Their companies were unsustainably debt-loaded, and when the bubble popped, so did they.

Bad news can be self-fulfilling. With spring in the air fresh and early, a bit more confidence would do us all some good. That whump Ms Gracewood heard might just have been me throwing my twittering laptop out of the window, and the shuffling sigh simply me turning to page 5.

- © Fairfax NZ News