A Blow To Journalism

Anyone interested in good journalism should be saddened today. The Southern Illinoisan, based in Carbondale, has announced it will be printed in Maryland Heights Missouri from this date forward.

 I’ve watched the demise of the newspaper in Mt. Vernon and the gutting of publications in Evansville and Belleville.

When printing presses are consolidated, some papers die. Others just become worthless. Early deadlines make it impossible to cover sports or city council meetings. The paper just becomes a collection of timeless enterprise stories and features.

The Southern has always been a top-notch newspaper. I dealt with it as an educator and found the reporters and editors to be fair and balanced. In the Monday edition, the publisher tried to put the best possible face on what I believe to be a bad story for Southern Illinois as a whole….and specifically the Carbondale area. Understand, Carbondale is already in a bad place because of the decline of Southern Illinois University. Good news is hard to find in that town.

Publisher Craig Rogers, who is only following through on marching orders from the owners, Lee Enterprises, says there will be a few changes, but readers will get their newspaper the same way they always have.

Here it is in a nutshell….They will digitally put the newspaper together in Carbondale, send it electronically to St. Louis, where it will be printed and then shipped back via a truck to Carbondale.

You can’t run a newspaper with dated news. What comes next is a drop in readership….which leads to fewer reporters….which leads to less scrutiny of public matters.

This is another blow to journalism in Southern Illinois.