Cutting Off the Kids
At HSU, bleary-eyed students would troop into the little building that houses the journalism department first thing each morning to grab copies of the Times-Standard before class. They won’t have a reason to do that now.
In the grade schools NIE lesson plans help teachers use newspapers to teach geography, to turn students into reporters, to learn to think critically and to teach them active citizen participation by showing them how to write letters to the editor.
It was probably a costly program, if the number of copies delivered just to just HSU was any indication. And I do think it is wasteful and unenvironmental to deliver stacks of papers that might end up in the recycling bin without every having been read. But better to phase down the program than to phase it out. Rather than kill the free paper copies altogether — offer it on demand. That way only the schools and educational programs that use the newspapers as part of the class curriculum would get it. And teachers who had access to computers could opt for the digital edition instead.
So much of what the news industry is doing these days seems shortsighted. News organizations grasp at new technologies like Twitter and video blogging without knowing how best to use them and abandon long-standing practices without understanding the repercussions of doing so.
Instead of flailing they need to focus. We need to return to basics in business. In good times or bad a company that wants to stay in business and prosper needs to ask itself two questions: How do we satisfy existing customers and how do we get new ones?
I do believe that in 10 years paper copies will go the way of the dollar seats at the ballpark. But I think that school kids should be the last ones to see that system end, not the first. Don’t sever any ties between young people and newspapers until you provide a proven alternative, not a work in progress.
Kids can’t cut up a digital copy with safety scissors. They can’t smear glue on it, wrap it around a milk jug and turn it into a piggy bank. They can’t turn the stories, photos and headlines into a collage and hang it on the fridge. And that’s a shame.
Marcy Burstiner is a professor of journalism and mass communication at Humboldt State University.
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44th Annual Kinetic Grand Championship Race
STAFF PICK / events, art, outdoors, sports, for kids, free / 9 a.m.-6 p.m. A 3-day, 42-mile kinetic sculpture race over land, sand, mud and water! LeMans start at the Noon Whistle on the Arcata Plaza. Follow the race through Manila, Eureka and into Ferndale on Memorial Day for the Glorious Finish. kineticgrandchampionship.com. 889-3024.
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Lanphere Dunes Restoration
STAFF PICK / outdoors / 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Meet at Pacific Union School. Help remove non-native invasives at the Lanphere Dunes Unit of the Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge. Tools and gloves provided, wear work clothes and bring water. Carpool to the protected site. 444-1397.
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ONE Comments
Comment / By noduck / Sept. 9, 2009, 4:40 p.m.
the a’s still offer $2 tickets and dollar dogs.