They tell me it’s a losing fight, like trying to eat tomato rice with breading in downtown Lisbon. But I fight – and I will try to make the reader aware of the same. I am concerned about the decline of paper newspapers. It distresses me to see many more screens than paper on pastry tables on Sundays. I wonder, because I don’t know, if his disappearance will not be a test of democracy.
For centuries, the newspaper was information and also a symbol: democracy rolled up and fresh, smelling of ink. It was access to what was happening in society and in the world. In certain countries, this was included, not really: access was blocked by censorship. Today, and I smile at this, newspapers come out exactly as they are intended. Unblemished. But already designed for digital, for a theoretically infinite audience and for consumerist speed. Preferably, costing little or nothing to those who read them.
It will be the air of the times. As for me, bad air. I don’t believe in quality information without mediation. I don’t believe in the virtue of the lack of space limits: it is this limit that guarantees that only the essential remains. That there is priority. I disdain the idea of a press with easy access and for two pennies, as I only believe in good press with good writing. All of this costs money, which, unfortunately for me and unlike in other times, few want to pay.
I’ll give you an example: Brazil, 50s and 60s. During the Military Dictatorship and the height of journalism in Rio de Janeiro, Nelson Rodrigues had a daily column in the newspaper ‘Última Hora’. It was called “Life As It Is”. In this one, he dealt with day-to-day life: what was seen, and, above all, what was not wanted to be seen. Obsession, jealousy, adultery, moral dilemmas.
Rio stopped to read Nelson. From the highest social class to the lowest, from the banker to the beautician on your street. Nelson made a profit: the newspaper sold; the dictatorship trembled with his tales. So much so that, from top to bottom, they were truncated by censorship. Newspapers were everywhere. Ruy Castro, Nelson Rodrigues’ biographer, learned to read on his own, skimming Nelson’s texts in the newspaper ‘Última Hora’, lying on his mother’s lap.
For Ruy, the daily newspaper was enough. Access to a text written for him, in the role of the reader, by an author selected with criteria and care by the newspaper. This was also the case for many Portuguese people. Those who chased ‘Público’, in a tobacconist in the neighborhood, to find out about the latest and Eduardo Prado Coelho’s column. Or that of José Pacheco Pereira. The same for ‘Expresso’ and the last page reserved for Vasco Pulido Valente.
And with this, there is the temptation of nostalgia. But we don’t have it. First, let’s understand the reasons for the decline, in my view, of the quality of information and the majority of columnists. Paper journalism, due to its business model, tries to stop the wind with its hands. And this is the wind, reader: there are few newspapers sold on newsstands. On the other hand, digital subscriptions are successful – and keep the press afloat.
Fortunately. The world has changed and, like companies, the press organizations have adapted: the future is digital, it will not come on paper. But we don’t have to abolish it. For some readers, including myself, the printed newspaper or magazine is part of a routine. It is a living room or desk object. It’s a moment of pause. This in a world that doesn’t pause; there is no such button. Yesterday’s news belongs to that day and that day alone. It doesn’t last for the week, the next month or the next few years. The information is fast and processed down to the millimeter to occupy a few centimeters of the cell phone screen.
I know what you might think, reader: the fight against the wind. And I know that I and others attached to the role will be a minority. We already are. But not only the voracious majorities produce quality work and ideas. I have even the biggest doubts that this is the case. I don’t believe in information generated at the speed with which you chew gum. I don’t believe in a democracy in which one of its pillars fits in your pants pocket: that’s why I’m worried.
Democracy only lives when it is watered. Information collected, filtered and processed by the best hands is water.