Newspapers, with all the limitations they have in covering only certain news, offer you an opportunity to focus and get to the bottom of an issue. You might not have at your disposal all the news or opinion pieces you find online, but you can live with it
There is something I hardly can live without: reading news. While I do spend a lot of time reading news online, I am a bit of a traditionalist, old school guy, and I still love reading printed newspapers. The other day, my usual newspaper shop was closed, and it was around 5pm in the evening and a sort of "fear of missing out" hit me.
I like read my newspaper in the evening, after dinner, it a sort of relaxation exercise, an opportunity to delve on the issues of the day while also learning new facts and ideas. Undeterred, I walked to the next closest shop, a good 700 meters away. Once I reached there, all the English language newspapers had been sold.
To make a long story or better a long walk "short" for you, I spent more than one hour trying to find other newspaper shops. Through this long "shuttling" from one place to another, I realised that there are less and less places selling papers.
It is not so hard to understand why: as people are glued to their mobile devices for so many hours, no one cares anymore about printed newspapers.
When I raised this issue during the training I am conducting, I am always reminded that, of course, there are plenty of news to be read on the go, on the mobile sets. Yet, inquiring more about these statements, I find that people are so overwhelmed by the constant scrolling of contents on their mobiles that actually very few spend time reading news contents.
Let me try to formulate it. Because people spend so much time on the internet, we are really getting lost, and we do miss out what counts the most. Certainly, a committed news reader can surf the "right" web sites, the ones of the newspapers she enjoys the most. As we know, there is also the possibility to aggregate news, making it easy for a reader to follow a given topic. Yet this can also be tricky because of the algorithms used by, what the European Commission defined as "gatekeepers", the most important digital platforms that dominate the market.
Such huge availability of contents can disarm you, almost outpower you. Instead, printed newspapers, with all the limitations they have in covering only certain news, offer you an opportunity to focus and get to the bottom of an issue. You might not have at your disposal all the news, all the opinion pieces you can find online, but you can live with it because you know that you will find what it counts.
There is also the socialisation aspect of reading printed newspapers. Once upon a time, because of them, people used to spend more informal time talking with each other. Schools, surely not all but a good number of them, used to buy newspapers, and students used to read them during their off time or during the breaks.
Another reason for not giving up on the printed newspaper is more related to our mental health. There is an increasing number of evidence stating that too much screen time is detrimental. Probably if you are reading this column, you do not need much persuasion about my case, but I have a question for you: can you do something to bring back the habit of reading among the young people?
Realistically speaking, I do know that it is going to be very hard to bring printed newspapers to a revival. Yet I believe that should be a key element of a "smart mix", a combination of online reading and something that is more reflective like, guess what? Reading the old printed newspapers! But if this idea makes any sense, we still need to find places where to buy newspapers, right?
Actually, I do not understand why it is so hard to sell them, even if we take into account what we have said about the diminishing readership that, as we well know, harshly impact the finances of the newspapers due to less advertising. Perhaps, we need some incentives for the shopkeepers to hold on something, selling newspapers that should be seen as a civic duty.
Certainly, this is a national issue, and the Federal government should step in. What about some tax breaks? What about some credit lines for the newspapers that are struggling but are producing good contents with a strong focus on the public interest?
Perhaps also municipalities have a role to play. Maybe major administrations like the government of the metropolitan capital (you read it right, I call it government), could come up with an initiative that recognises shopkeepers willing to sell newspapers. Like restaurants welcoming people to use their toilets, something similar could be done for those helping us remaining updated with what's going on in the country and in the world.
Then, another consideration. Are the newspapers themselves being too demanding and strict with their requirements and conditions towards the local shops, making selling newspapers too cumbersome?
Schools, especially private ones (I wish I could include here also government schools) could play their part and their principals and administrators should embrace a special role. They can truly become the supporters of our civic life because our society, our democracy is really strengthened if people, especially the young, are more informed through news reading.
A proposal for them: they should buy tons and tons of printed newspapers and "force" their students to spend some good, quality off line time by reading printed newspapers.
One last idea: Can't supermarket chains like Bhatbhateni, Big Mart, Saleways do something? I do understand that by selling newspapers and other magazines they won't make zillions of rupees, but they can, certainly, bear the "cost" of selling them, even if, at the beginning, few clients will buy them. This can be their civic duty too and part of their CSR commitments towards the society.
Ultimately the other day was a good walk, even if way too long.
The author is the co-founder of ENGAGE and of The Good Leadership
