[AEJMC Newspaper Division list] New name for Newspaper Division?

[Susan Keith]

   Professor Keith has put forward thoughtful arguments for changing the
name of the division she has so faithfully chaired for the past year. While
thoughtful -- even literary -- I'm not convinced that the reasons for change
are convincing.
    Many in, around and outside the newspaper industry seem to have
developed a Titantic complex. The ship has struck an iceburg and is headed
for the bottom.  Abandon ship! Or, at least, find a cruise liner that's more
comfortable in the contemporary age.
    That the American newspaper is going through one of its more turbulent
periods is not in question. From small town to metropolis, editors and
publishers are looking for new models and better ways to keep a changing and
sometimes fickle citizenry.
    Academe, of all institutions, should be a place that takes the long view
of everything.  The long view -- the media historian in me has seized the
platform -- says that the newspaper has changed in response to competition
and culture over two centuries of American life.  Approximately 60 million
newspapers are sold daily under 1,500 names across the land.  And, 8,000
community newspapers serve smaller towns and suburbs.  The explosion of
inexpensive and  instantaneous means of interpersonal communication is
driving everyone in the business bonkers as they search of a new way to do
business.  This is a developing story, folks.  The end has yet to be written
and that may be a decade or more away.
    Amidst the contemporary turbulence, it's clear that newspapers are
trying to add credible, competitive, useful online versions of print
products.  Thus  "the newspaper" remains at the heart of whatever is
happening.  None of the well-meant but fuzzy alternatives to "Newspaper
Division" seems to say what we're all about.
    We have had a chronic problem of bridge building to the newspaper
industry, and changing the name will do nothing to improve it.  Tell me the
last time a newspaper reporter, editor or publisher told you how much he or
she enjoyed the latest issue of Newspaper Research Journal?  I advance the
thought as a long-time member of NRJ's editorial board who holds the work of
the editors in great esteem.  But what academics write about is a bit thick
from the standpoint of those who are trying to report the democracy to a
sometimes disinterested readership.
    The division's work has always been tied to what goes on in the
newspaper business and has promoted continuous contact over the decades.
It's difficult to believe that a name change will be understood or favorably
received from the still important world of newspaper journalism.

Wallace B. Eberhard, Ph.D.
Professor (Emeritus), Georgia
Former head, Newspaper Division






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