More is less in communications - Keith Roulston editorial

Recently there was a discussion at a meeting of the local board of directors I sit on, about how to get more information to the public regarding the work we do. It seems we have more methods of communicating than ever before but it’s harder to reach a wide swath of people.

 

Many of the people on this board are very active in their communities and it’s important for them to get the word out to fellow residents about the various groups they work with, yet despite so many modern options of connecting, it’s harder to blanket an area with information. With so many internet-based options, people tend to break off into communities of interest and therefore it’s difficult to get news of upcoming events out to people who live in the same town or village. Some are resorting to posters, as well as a variety of online options, to spread the word  – but that doesn’t always work because people often don’t use local stores or gas stations where they might have seen the information.

 

It’s another example that sometimes more is less. The world has changed in my lifetime. Once, for instance, there was one radio station, CKNX, and virtually everyone listened to it. Each town and village had its own, locally-owned newspaper and virtually everyone read it. If you got the message in these two forms of communications, you reached most people.

 

Today, as well as separate AM and FM services on CKNX, there are branches of another radio station in Goderich and Exeter, splitting the audience.

 

As for local newspapers, we went from individual local owners of each newspaper in the days when the same equipment was 
used to print newspapers and local letterheads, posters, etc. to the revolution of offset printing when most newspapers were printed in the same centralized publisher and fewer people published more newspapers. Things went further, to corporate ownership today when, (except for the odd independent like The Citizen), most newspapers  are constantly diminishing, printing fewer and fewer pages, laying off staff, even closing local offices, and reducing their importance to readers, leading to sinking circulation.

 

Many younger residents, my own four progeny included, no longer subscribe to a newspaper. Often, however, they read news on the internet that originated in newspapers. But if no local newspapers survive, who will collect that news?

 

Meanwhile, even with more local radio stations, people turn to other sources, getting their music online, for instance. To cut corners, radio stations reduce the amount of news-gathering staff.

 

As for television, where we once had a TV station generating news and entertainment in Wingham, that centralized with CFPL, London. That independent station, however, is now simply the London outlet for the national CTV network, generating local news twice a day but otherwise replicating the exact same content as every other CTV-2 station in Canada.

 

But who cares, you ask? Thanks to the internet, we have access to more TV outlets than we’d ever have thought possible 
back when we could get two channels on local TV.

 

We have so much selection these days that people can pass out their own version of the news, and even seek a wider audience 
for it through the social media, which allows us to connect with others who think like us. 

 

We can pick up larger-scale support for our way of thinking by watching a news service like Fox News, which picks commentators, for instance, who constantly support the fiction that Donald Trump was prevented from a second term as U.S. President by wide-scale electoral cheating, and that all those officials and judges to affirm the election results are just part of the conspiracy against him.

 

Theoretically, the idea that there are more news options should be positive. In reality, it hasn’t worked. There is only one truth. A million years ago when I studied journalism, we were charged with the responsibility of combatting our own prejudices in collecting and passing on the news. It was hammered into us that we had to get past our own beliefs because there were limited ways for people to get their news and we had a responsibility to give people both sides so they could make their own enlightened choices.

 

Such isn’t the case today when people can choose their own version of the truth, whether from like-thinking correspondents on social media or talking heads on a wide variety of “news” outlets.

 

There are more individual options than ever before, yet less “community”. Therefore it’s harder for a town, village and surrounding area to come together for a common need, making the job of community leaders  more difficult.