From Typewriters to News Deserts

Note: This image was created using AI, despite my own mixed feelings about its implications for journalism. But that’s a story for another blog.

Welcome to the first post of Alison’s Corner, where I’ll share thoughts, ideas, and observations on writing, communications, and the stories that shape how we understand the world.

Today, I’m feeling reflective. As I prepared to launch this website, I pulled out old newspaper clips dating back to the mid-1990s. Looking through them reminded me not only of my own journey as a writer, but also of how much journalism, newspapers, and communications have changed.

When I was a reporter for my college newspaper, The Daily Illini, the internet had yet to go mainstream. Most other soon-to-be journalists and I were blissfully unaware of—and unprepared for—the seismic changes about to hit newsrooms across the country.

How unprepared? I still remember my Journalism 101 professor, Fred Mohn, sitting at the head of the class and typing on an old-school typewriter as we worked on our assignment. Mohn, who spent years as a reporter at United Press before it became United Press International, told us we should get used to the noise because newsrooms were very noisy places. He was partly right.

My first few newsrooms were noisy, rambunctious places. But when I left the news business in 2010, they had become much quieter—and not just because the typewriters were gone. Animated phone conversations gave way to email exchanges. Reporters on deadline became less willing to engage with coworkers, instead putting on headphones to drown out what little noise remained.

Gone, too, were the noisy “morgues,” where a big machine carrying small manila envelopes of newspaper clips on a conveyor would rise and fall from somewhere unseen at the touch of a button. And, of course, the printing presses also went the way of the dodo, at least at papers like The Trentonian, where I landed my first job out of college and where the presses were housed in the building itself. Eventually, it was cheaper to outsource the printing. In the case of The Trentonian, the company even sold the building.

It’s fair to say some of this was just nostalgia for a romanticized age. There is a good case for that view. Newsrooms are more diverse than they were then, although there is still a long way to go. Information is also easier to find than ever, although accuracy is not always easier to determine.

Still, I believe the disappearance of those newsroom trappings was something of a canary in the coal mine. Getting rid of them wasn’t only about efficiency. It was also about cost-cutting. The internet accelerated that pressure as newspapers struggled to make money in a world where information traveled quickly and, in many cases, for free.

It became a devil’s bargain: the public saved on subscription costs, advertisers left for what they thought were greener pastures, and many communities were left with news deserts and a less informed public.

I feel a little guilty myself, having left the noble profession of journalism for the so-called dark side of marketing and public relations. Of course, that stark distinction was never accurate and is even less so today. I was lucky to land my first corporate job at Vanguard, which emphasized honesty and transparency over spin. That remains a highly effective strategy for building brand credibility, especially now, when credibility is so rare.