“Stop the presses.”

I always wanted to scream that exclamation at the top of my lungs as an excited newspaper editor eager to remake the front page to include a late-breaking story.

I recall a couple of occasions over the course of my career when I not only bumped against press deadlines, but busted them beyond repair to accommodate situations in which it seemed like news was falling down around our heads. But I never stopped a press run once it began. That’s a fairly serious matter that would necessarily involve some fairly serious circumstances. 

It’s been decades since I worked at a newspaper with its own press. I suppose I’d have to make a phone call or send a text to stop the presses.

In all seriousness, I’m more concerned these days about another meaning for stop the presses. And that’s the decline of the newspaper industry and what that implies. For businesses and business owners, but also for individuals and, collectively, our nation. The ramifications include everything from economics to governance to the growing divide among citizens whose common interests and values should unite them.

The trends make me all the more grateful to work in print journalism with real, honest-to-goodness print. Call me a Luddite, but I prefer printed pages.
I acknowledge the advantages of screens and wouldn’t go back for a minute to the dark ages before the internet. But there’s just something about reading a newspaper you hold in your hands. The visual and tactile experience can’t be replicated. Especially while you’re also slurping hot coffee.

I’m doubly blessed to work for a newspaper that enjoys the support of so many advertisers. I’m not just writing that because what they do makes it possible for me to do what I do. Given the myriad options for their advertising dollars, I’m grateful they spend some with the Business Times. I hope it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement.

Tragically, my good fortune is more the exception than the rule.

According to a recent report from the Medill School of Journalism, Media and Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University, more than 360 newspapers closed in the United States between late 2019 and May 2022. Since 2005, the U.S. has lost more than a fourth of its newspapers. At a rate of two newspapers a week, the U.S. remains on track to lose a third of its newspapers by 2025.

Here are some more grim numbers to ponder. Newspaper revenues have shrunk by more than half since 2005 — from $50 billion to $20 billion. Newspaper employment has dropped even more — about 70 percent since 2006. That includes a 58 percent reduction in newsroom staffs.

One result of all those casualties? About 70 million residents — a fifth of the U.S. population — either live in an area with no local news organization or only one local outlet. About 7 percent of counties in the U.S. have no local newspaper. 

The biggest threat to arise in these news deserts? The loss of information that informs residents, helps them identify and address problems and promotes the kind of efforts that sustain communities and democracy.

Newspapers play a crucial role as watchdogs guarding against all manner of malfeasance. In particular the government power that seems to so easily corrupt those who wield it. 

Thomas Jefferson once said if he were presented a choice between a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, he wouldn’t hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

Newspapers fulfill a crucial function in offering a curated source of information for broad consumption. Professional reporters, photographers and editors gather and disseminate news — most of them, I’d contend, in fair and ethical fashion. No lies. No political polarization for the sake of polarization. Where it’s presented, opinion is identified as such.

Moreover, there are no algorithms involved with newsprint. Readers are free to choose for themselves whether to pour over stories word by word, skim the headlines or ignore what doesn’t interest them at that moment. Here’s the best part: There’s a good chance they’ll read something that contradicts their beliefs and perhaps even changes their minds. Newspapers don’t function to reinforce opinions, but to challenge them. With facts, not hyperbole.

There’s good news — in every sense of those words — that some for-profit news organizations still prosper, hybrid and nonprofit models have been invented to deliver news and more digital-only news sites have launched.

I suspect newspaper presses eventually will stop, becoming as anachronistic by technological evolution as buggy whips. Then I’ll just have to read the paper on a screen while I drink my coffee. 

But it’s my fervent hope newspapers — and by broader definition, the press — never stop.  

Phil Castle is editor of the Business Times. Reach him at 424-5133 or phil@thebusinesstimes.com.