Recent events that affect me personally have made me ponder the question of life and what do people see as the future of journalism?

First let’s back up a minute and add a disclaimer: no one and nothing will be harmed by my opinions afforded to me by the First Amendment.

Getting my daily and weekly newspapers used to be a joy, especially when it was in good old fashioned paper form. Today, the dailies and weeklies paper anywhere feels like the circular for a supermarket.

The papers used to have substance. There was the smell of the ink and the paper crinkled and oh how it felt in your hands… and the ink smudges on your fingers.

The other thing about these papers, whether daily or weekly is the reporters used to be your neighbors and friends. Then newspapers and media in general started to change.

Even printing plants changed, and in some cases disappeared all together.

Newspapers at first, especially the weeklies, started to merge. It was too expensive for them to be on their own then the dailies started to be sold. It was too expensive for them to be maintained under whatever ownership it was at the time.

As these contractions and mergers and sales started to happen, it affected every aspect of the newspaper. Reporters were retired or laid off, and the same with other kinds of people who worked for the papers.

A lot of this started happening as the digital age emerged, and more people were online. Newspapers eventually all had websites.

Soon your newspaper people, most of them old school newspaper folks, had to learn websites and everything websites entailed. And they all complied to the best of their ability.

These changes were hard on people who just read the papers as well as those who put them out and put them to bed and created them.

I remember the first time somebody said to me soon there will be no print paper it will just be online. I didn’t believe them. Look at all the things that no longer exist?

Then somebody said to me eventually a lot of the papers will cease to exist because all people care about is what they can make out of them whether it’s selling them off bit by bit as a hedge fund owner or just eviscerating them with bad practices. And I said no, how can newspapers cease to exist? They’re part of our life blood.

During all this time, I’ve always tried to support local and regional journalism. At one point in time I had a regional subscription, local subscriptions, and two national subscriptions, but the costs kept going up so now I have fewer subscriptions.

Many people can’t afford a newspaper subscription any longer. Many people choose not to afford a newspaper subscription because they don’t think they’re worth it sometimes even when I didn’t think it was worth it I kept the subscription because I knew people who worked for these papers.

Someone said to me not so long ago that People just don’t want to support local journalism. And, newspapers are not very good at being relevant. Plus, they make a ton of mistakes in what to cover, where and when.

They continued that they felt like there is a general selfish attitude in this country right now. They recounted a story where they had a conversation with someone about a service that people use. They commented on how the person they were having a conversation with about this organization and service was quite dismissive and she felt it was the with journalism as in how they functioned and public perception of what used to be kind of a national treasure and a hallmark of what our country was founded on.

But then you have to legitimately wonder if news organizations can’t be local enough to matter anymore? And that’s not just for print media it’s for television media as well.

All of these corporate structures of these media organizations are in a rat race. Against each other, and you have to wonder if also against the people who actually pay attention to them the regular people they don’t employ?

All of these organizations are trying to tick various boxes to be politically correct, even down to their choice of employees, which don’t you think is a horrible way to use other human beings?

I used to love the way journalism, covered our stories and our issues. No matter what the story was big or small, so many of them got airtime or print inches, but bit by bit as the industry changed, the economy changed, and the Internet grew… that all changed.

What is everyone’s biggest complaint today? Is it that the issues in their area don’t matter and there’s no one to talk to?

Because of journalism, issues got voices and faces and often solutions were found. If solutions weren’t found the issues were at least exposed. What do we have today? A mélange meets mishigas or just confusa?

What does being politically correct mean vis-à-vis journalism?

What does being politically correct mean vis-à-vis politics?

And it’s not like journalism is dead everywhere. I also take a peek at international papers and international news programs. How else are you supposed to find out what happens in the rest of the world?

There’s a phrase you always hear if it bleeds it leads. That’s the way it still is today, only fewer stories. Because television journalism has been going through issues as well.

TV stations have multiple changes in leadership and finances, etc. they change the style of their reporters, the faces of their reporters, and restrict what they can cover. Much like their print journalism counterparts, they used to rely a lot on their connections within the community for their stories. Only that’s not good enough anymore.

And God forbid you get older. I really feel that there isn’t a more ageist area of employment than journalism. And all of these news organizations no matter what, know they can employ new people half the age of their current staff at less than half the price, right? And I’m not saying that because I have something against younger journalists now that I’m 61 and reading what they write and seeing them on TV, it’s just every time you see a new face or a new voice you wonder whom have they replaced? And why?

So what happens to these people we all used to love and respect, even if we didn’t know them personally we just watched their stories or read their stories? What happens as their voices are compromised or are they not being compromised? What is the truth?

As journalism changed, and the Internet grew, these people known as bloggers emerged. They called them citizen journalists. I am a blogger. I started blogging because many years ago in my community, it was the only way to get our issues heard.

In the early days, there was no push button anything. I had to learn some basic HTML code. There was Phillyfuture. org, which was an awesome thing .

No, I have never quite been comfortable with the term citizen journalist because blogging is opinion based in part. But we filled a void.

Soon a lot of bloggers developed shall we say symbiotic relationship relationships with traditional journalists. It was really cool to have these writers that you read every day, just talk to you. They were our local and regional news heroes, and I’m not sounding geeky on purpose saying that it’s what they were, we as bloggers respected them.

Some of these journalists became friends with some of us bloggers. There wasn’t an organization or a blogger/journalist union. We were just people. It was mutual respect and understanding.

Because of some of these journalists, I learned I actually could write and my truth mattered. I ended up getting writing mentors. And I was told that I should always write what I know. And the know part extended to things I could research and back up.

But as a blogger now for what is it, two decades give or take, what have I never forgotten that I find so sad? I find it really sad when people affiliated with the media find a blogger to be like the threat to journalism as they know it and why is that? Am I pretending that I went to journalism school? Never.

Over the course of time I have had some traditional bylines, some compensated. But my blogging? Never compensated and I even pay for this site to have no advertising to annoy my readers.

Also, as blogging has evolved types of bloggers have evolved. Some like to call them mommy bloggers. They wrote about only mom things or Disney cruises. That’s fine if that’s their jam, but most of them didn’t like me because they didn’t understand why I had to talk about things that were happening? To them I always thought it’s kind of like I don’t understand why they do blogging of products they don’t even like just because they’ll be given something?

But to each their own. They did their thing, I did mine.

Then, as the tone of everyday voices in this country began to change, once again, attitude towards bloggers and independent thinkers changed. And today it’s kind of downright dangerous to state your opinion, and what kind of screwed up thing is that considering what our forefathers fought, bled, and died for?

Today in all aspects of the world, you’re supposed to assimilate become Stepford. Over and over we are either outright told or it’s insinuated by actions that being an individual is bad.

We weren’t created to be identical, anymore as Americans were we created to live in a dictatorship or monarchy or oligarchy.

So circling back to the future of journalism, where does that lead? What is the future of journalism? What do people think the future of journalism should be? What do people miss about journalism?

As always, I don’t have those answers. I do my best to be truthful and to be a good person, no matter what my critics feel and when I have written first and foremost, it’s not for an audience. It’s for me and writing has always been my catharsis, and now it’s being threatened again.

At the end of the day is being a blogger and being threatened because you did something so terribly wrong or just because you’re different than what some people know and expect?

Is the message here being different is bad? Is the message here that women are supposed to be literally barefoot pregnant and in the kitchen? Or if you are beyond that stage in life, you’re supposed to just sit on your rocking chair and sip chamomile tea with a shawl around your back?

I don’t have the answers to those questions, either.

Anyway, that’s all my rambling for today.