Santa Cruz Observer

What Starbucks is saying about newspapers -- but not everyone agrees

By TOM HONIG

One of my favorite wall posters from years ago was a picture of the San Francisco Chronicle and a mug of coffee with the caption "Caen and Coffee." Everyone in the greater Bay Area knew what that meant -- an interlude with the great Chronicle columnist Herb Caen and a few minutes with your coffee to get caught up on the latest gossip.

Coffee and reading the newspaper seemed like a perfect match. That's why this news hit so hard: Starbucks will soon stop selling newspapers in its cafes. Sigh.

It figures, though. The ubiquitous cellphone has taken the place of newspapers at public places -- cafes, restaurants and the like. All during my working years my favorite getaway during the day was a quick lunch or snack at a local eatery. And I always took a newspaper or magazine with me. No longer. I sit there just like everyone else, staring -- maybe gawking is a better word -- at Twitter, Facebook or even just my e-mail.

Let's face it. Most people -- especially on the younger side -- just don't read the paper. Starbucks isn't ending newspaper sales just to be difficult. If the papers just sit there on the shelf and then go into the recycling bin at the end of the day, who can blame them for cutting back?

In a New York Times story about Starbuck's decision, the only people expressing regret were the older folks. More typical was this reaction: “I think it makes total sense; it’s not a surprise. I don’t think there is any upside to keeping the paper. If you look around in this Starbucks, there’s no one buying a newspaper. It’s just another casualty of change. Another casualty of the internet.”

That sentiment is particularly stark for us old-time print people. Many of us spend our post-newspaper hours venting  at the horrible hedge funds that now control most small- and medium-market dailies. And yes, they deserve any enmity they get. But there's also the realization that the newspaper that so many of us took pride in producing is just, well, not so marketable anymore.

The impact of the lessened role of words in print is huge. As I've written previously, social media and dramatic video on news shows appeal to emotions, while the written word is better at explaining events in a more rational way. 

That's why I was impressed by a sentiment expressed by a radio journalist by the name of Nikki Medoro of KGO radio in San Francisco. Writing on Twitter -- yes, she acknowledged the irony -- she asked: "Could the answer to 'how we got here' be the rise of social media and the demise of newspapers? Could the solution be as simple as quitting social media and buying an actual paper?"

Then she adds: "I know it's silly that I'm on posting this ON social media ... buy ya know ... that's where we are."

I appreciate her sentiment. Maybe newspapers are still worth fighting for.

Robert Mueller wasn't made for the video-clip era

The absence of an electrifying Washington moment in Wednesday’s two-stage testimony by (Robert) Mueller not only deprived Democrats of the crystallizing episode they needed to drive public opinion on impeachment, but it also meant Republicans had no reason to budge from their anti-impeachment stance.

-- Carl Hulse, The New York Times

 

By TOM HONIG

Is that what it takes to get anything done in politics these days? Do we really govern only by electrifying Washington?

Count me as one who found Robert Mueller's testimony before the Senate and the House refreshing. He might just as well have walked into the hearing rooms and said, "Read the damn report."

Social media and cable news rely, more and more, on the zinger. Get the best three or four words you can and get them ready for video clips. If they're the perfect combination of wit, alliteration and nastiness, the video will spread across the media, maybe even making it to the apex -- the late-night comedy shows.

Admittedly I can appreciate a good one-liner. After all, I wrote headlines for years, always in search of a grabber. But that doesn't mean that the lack of electricity should doom public discussion and ultimately government actions.

There's a good deal of evidence that the electrifying moment is setting the agenda these days. The president is a master of the form. So is presidential hopeful Kamala Harris, who knew that  by  informing Joe Biden that she didn't think he was a racist actually was just another way of saying that he might be a racist. When she said it, she zoomed up the polls.

Maybe there is something positive about the quick hits. They move people at the time, but tomorrow will bring a new outrage, another zinger and another issue to think about. Maybe in this fast-paced environment a short attention span is a good thing.

But let's all take a moment to appreciate Robert Mueller. He wasn't on Team Red or on Team Blue. He sat there, unashamedly a man of another era in Washington, answering some pretty obnoxious questions with unsullied dignity.

I decided to take a break from commentary because of all the noise. In five years, things have only gotten worse

By TOM HONIG

This tiny corner of the blogosphere has been quiet since April of 2014. I had decided that the din from social media and from cable television had drowned out the world of independent commentary, the kind in which the reader might not be able to predict what was about to be written or said.

Now it's 2019, and even though few will notice, I’ve decided to contribute a word or two again.

In the last five years, the noise has only increased. In that time, a blustering figure somehow found his way into the White House, and he’s  taken what used to be described as the United States onto a wild ride of nastiness unimaginable just a generation ago.

Not that he deserves all the blame. A considerable amount, sure. But his allies and opponents decided to match his fictional ramblings with questionable tactics of their own. The public debate features accusations and cross-accusations of the "how dare you" kind, with base motives ascribed to each side, a kind of blaring public debate that makes me wonder what happened to the days of discussion groups, amicable political dialogue and genteel salons.

Somehow, then, through the noise appeared this gem in my local bookstore: "On Democracy" by E.B. White. Yes that E.B. White, author of  "Charlotte's Web" and "Stuart Little" and co-author of the classic "On Writing" by Strunk and White. It turns out that White also wrote extensively on what democracy means and on how it's practiced. The book, newly published and edited by his granddaughter, Martha White, features essays on the health of our democracy during some of the most challenging years of the 20th century. From 1928 to 1976, White held firm, first against the Nazi threat, through the Joe McCarthy era and on into the 1970s, offering wise words on the care and feeding of our public debate, the very essence of a healthy democracy.

He speaks to a 21st century audience that would do well to pay heed. He writes of the power and limits of the majority -- and the same of various factions that have rights as well. He writes of the threats from outside and inside our nation, and most importantly, of the danger of overemotional passions that can result from demagogues.

Then there's his view of the importance of newspapers. As that industry dies off -- more on this in the days to come -- its fading role in today's mass media carries with it these words of warning:

"One of the earliest truths (and to him most valuable) that the author of "Mein Kampf" discovered was that it is not the written word, but the spoken word, which in heated moments moves great masses of people to noble or ignoble action. The written word, unlike the spoken word, is something which every person examines privately and judges calmly by his own intellectual standards, not by what the man next to him thinks."

And here he quotes Hitler: "I know that one is able to win people far more by the spoken than by the written word...'

I bet Hitler would have loved Fox News, MSNBC, Twitter and Facebook.