Stopping the presses

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, February 8th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming next on The World and Everything In It: Stop the presses!

Back in the day, that old newspaper phrase simply meant “breaking news is coming” and even though the command was to stop, it always implied getting those presses going again after the update.

According to one journalism school, the U-S has lost more than a fourth of its newspapers since 2005. By 2025, the country is on track to lose a third of its newspapers.

So stop the presses is no longer an exciting phrase that promises more to come. Today, it’s more literal than that.

REICHARD: Another report found that 40 of the largest 100 newspapers in the country publish digital-only versions at least once a week. But as WORLD’s Myrna Brown reports, the online news trend is coming to smaller towns, too. She takes us to one community coming to terms with the end of an era.

AUDIO: [RUTH COLLINS OPENING DOOR, SQUEAKS]

MYRNA BROWN CORRESPONDENT: It’s early Wednesday morning. Stepping carefully onto her front porch, Ruth Collins already knows how she’ll spend the first half of her day.

RUTH COLLINS: On a Wednesday I get up and have my coffee and banana and go out and get the paper.

Collins is 86 years old and leans a bit. So she takes her time walking down her stairs and across her paved driveway. Two boxes are posted at the edge of her front lawn. As cars on the two-lane road swoosh by, Collins walks right by the brick-encased mailbox and reaches instead into the bright yellow one. That’s where her daily delight is delivered.

COLLINS: I’ve never lived in a house where I didn’t receive the paper. I’m serious.

As a girl growing up in rural Camden, Alabama, the retired educator says her mother, father and seven siblings took turns reading the weekly newspaper.

COLLINS: My mom probably looked at it first and daddy glanced at the sports part before he went to work that evening and so after we finished our chores and dinner and all we would struggle over who got the paper first.

Collins says she’s always loved the “funnies.” Dick Tracy and Blondie to be specific. But these days she gravitates to a more sobering section of her local newspaper.

COLLINS: Obituaries because so many folk in my age group that I knew or worked with at some place, show up there and I guess I want to know.

But soon, Collins will have to get used to another way of “staying in the know.” The Alabama Media Group publishes the newspaper Collins reads. And at the end of the day on February 26th, it will permanently stop the presses. After that last issue, The Birmingham News, The Huntsville Times, and Collin’s Mobile Press-Register will all go digital. A decade ago, the combined daily circulation for all three of those newspapers was about 260,000. Now it’s down to roughly 30,000.

COLLINS: I thought it was a joke at first and then they continued talking about it. I said what am I going to do? I’m used to reading the paper, shoot. I’m going to have to learn to use that doggone laptop.

According to the Pew Research Center, since 2021, about half of all Americans were already getting their news from social media sites—52 percent. When asked for their preferred news platform, 35 percent chose television, and 7 percent radio. But only 5 percent opted for print. Veteran broadcaster Ron Reams saw it coming.

REAMS: Good evening Mobile and welcome to another edition of WABB BLAB, I’m Ron Reams, news director for WABB….

Reams spent nearly four decades working in Alabama newsrooms - radio, television and print.

REAMS: Back when the Press Register which is our local paper once again, was in its heyday, we had a three story building in downtown Mobile. The news people were on the second floor and was busy, busy, busy.

Reams says people could count on that local coverage until the state’s three largest newspapers formed that conglomeration. He says cutbacks came next and that led to fewer local stories.

REAMS: If there’s something that I am basically convinced of is that people make poor decisions if they don’t have enough information.

Getting news online is certainly convenient. But some researchers insist how we get that information matters: It can impact how we process and retain what we learn.

BARON: I’m Naomi Baron…

Professor Naomi Baron is a linguist and professor emerita of linguistics at American University in Washington D.C. She’s spent much of her 35-year-career doing research on technology and language.

BARON: If you are reading to get information that you want to remember, that you want to think about or do something with, all of the data suggests you’re going to do better in remembering if you read in print than if you read on a digital device.

Professor Baron says one of the reasons hinges on mindset.

BARON: Reading a Facebook or Twitter post doesn’t take a lot of energy and we somehow assume that if we’re reading on the same kinds of devices, whether they’re phones, tablets or a computer screen, if we’re reading on those devices something serious, probably it should be just as easy as reading that Facebook status update, but it’s not.

Professor Baron’s research includes a survey of both middle school and university students around the world.

BARON: And if you ask them what they like most about reading in print, I like the feel of paper. So we have a sense of navigation and geography and that helps us remember things.

And that, she predicts, is why print will never fully be replaced.

BARON: Vinyl records came back. People didn’t want to hear everything digitally. But I think there will be enough people who really relish reading a print newspaper that the genre will not disappear.

AUDIO: [COLLINS READING NEWSPAPER]

Ruth Collins is praying that Professor Baron is right.

Back at the Collins house, Ruth sits across from her 90-year-old husband, Donald. He’s reclined in his favorite chair, reading the sports section. Ruth goes straight to the Obituaries and then backtracks to the front page news. Both seem oblivious to the mindless chatter coming from the television in the corner of their tiny family room. Instead, Donald puts on his glasses, folds the paper twice, and leans in. Both seem to savor what Ruth calls unhurried time with an old, trusted friend. She says she can’t decide what she’ll miss most about her newspaper—the scent, the sound or the anticipation of the next page.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Myrna Brown in Whistler, Alabama.

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