A world without newspapers?

RICHMOND, Va. (BP) — “Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.”

In “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” sailors go mad with thirst under a scorching sun as their cursed vessel sits, day after day, “idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean.”

Erich Bridges

Thirsty in the midst of an ocean: Sounds like our relationship to the ever-increasing torrent of information flooding us from every direction. We can’t even begin to absorb it, much less use it effectively.

“Information workers, who comprise about 63 percent of the U.S. workforce, are each bombarded with 1.6 gigabytes of information on average every day through emails, reports, blogs, text messages, calls, and more,” writes Andrea Coombes of The Wall Street Journal.

Drenched in this waterfall of data, we often remain dehydrated when it comes to the knowledge and insights we need to understand God’s world and how to respond to it.

Several pastors and mission ministers recently were asked what they read regularly. They cited multiple types of print and digital media, but said they needed more than information. They want handles, context, practical tools they can use to get their families and churches involved in the wider world.

At the very moment when all kinds of media are multiplying, one of the best tools available for understanding the onslaught of information is on life support: journalism. For all their biases and shortcomings, good newspapers tell us what is happening, where and when it’s happening and, often, why it’s happening.

With a newspaper in one hand and a Bible in the other, we can cut through the clutter, get to the heart of the matter, and act.

A vital free press was important enough to the founders of our nation to appear in the Bill of Rights, right up top in the First Amendment, alongside freedom of religion, speech, assembly, and petition. Ben Franklin was a dedicated newspaperman. Thomas Jefferson understood it as well.

“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter,” Jefferson famously said.

Mr. Jefferson, we are facing the possibility of the former.

Newspapers large and small are closing up in one city after another. More than 22,000 U.S. newspaper jobs were lost in 2008; another 7,000 employees have been laid off so far this year. One analyst predicts the last newspaper printing press will stop rolling by 2043. Others think the end will come much sooner than that amid a tough economy, generational declines in readership, and the demand for free content (including news) online.

Religious media face those pressures – plus the decline of support for denominational institutions. Southern Baptist state newspapers, for instance: They have a long, noble tradition of informing churches and holding Southern Baptist leaders and institutions accountable. They’re still doing both, but struggling to survive in the new multimedia environment.

Stop whining, respond new-media proponents. Journalism isn’t dying, they assert, it’s just being forced to change like everything else. More good news reporting than ever is available online at the touch of a keypad – sifted and sorted by personal interest. And it’s being greatly enriched by “citizen journalism,” blogs, social media, and other new forms of digital interaction.

True enough, but is Google opening news bureaus overseas? Will Facebook send reporters to cover the next war or natural disaster, or investigate corruption in your local government?

So, I challenge you to buy a newspaper. That’s right, buy it – with cash money from your pocket. Read it. Put it into the hands of a young person in search of knowledge and understanding. Subscribe to a Baptist state paper.

You can’t make an impact on your mission field – which is the world, from your town to the ends of the earth – unless you understand it.