Category: News

U.S. newspapers: My, how things have changed since 1984!

Posted on by Douglas F. Cannon

My, how things have changed in the newspaper business during my lifetime! I realized that when I found a 1984 research report, “Relating to Readers in the ‘80s,” in my files. It painted a drastically different picture of the U.S. newspaper industry from what we see today.

For most of the 21st century, I’ve read about a declining newspaper industry. For example:

The number of U.S. has fallen.

Northwestern University’s October 2025 State of Local News Report said that since 2005, the number of U.S. newspapers had dropped by 40 percent (from 8,891 to 5,419). As a result, 50 million Americans lived in counties with limited or no access to local news.

Newspaper reach has declined.

Newspaper print circulation dropped by 70 percent (from 53.35 million to 15.25 million) from 2005 to 2025, the Northwestern report said. Online page views on the 100 largest newspaper websites had gone down by 40 percent. Less than 20 percent of the remaining 937 U.S. “daily” newspapers (down from 1,566 in 2005) were printed and delivered seven days a week. Only 56 percent appeared every day.

The newspaper workforce has dwindled.

The number of journalists working in local U.S. newsrooms has fallen from 75,000 in 2005 to 30,160 in 2024, the Northwestern report said. The total newspaper workforce has gone from 365,460 in 2005 to 91,550 in 2024.

Interest in news reports has waned.

Pew Research reported in February 2026 that 48 percent of Americans considered news irrelevant to their lives. Forty-nine percent didn’t actively seek out news. They just came across it. Nevertheless, 80 percent said they had a responsibility to be informed about the news when they voted.

Trust in news reports has fallen.

Gallup reported in March 2026 that 28 percent of Americans had a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in news media. Another 36 percent indicated “not very much confidence” in news reporting, and 34 percent reported “none at all.” A February 2026 Pew Research survey showed a similar lack of trust in news organizations. Pew said that adults younger than 30 were less likely than other groups to trust journalists.

A 2025 News Literacy Project survey found that 84 percent of teens (ages 13 to 18) described news organizations negatively. The teens called news reporting fake, crazy, boring, biased, and sad.

Things used to be different.

None of these trends was true in the report I found in my files. “Relating to Readers in the ‘80s,” said:

Newspapers were here to stay.

Study participants recognized that screens may someday deliver news. Nevertheless, 75 percent said computer technology wouldn’t replace printed newspapers. Sixty-four percent agreed that “there is really no substitute for a newspaper every day” (p. 13).

Almost everyone was a reader.

Ninety percent of study participants had read a daily newspaper in the past week. Seventy-eight percent had read a daily newspaper three or four times in the same period. Forty-six percent said they were reading newspapers more frequently in 1984 than in 1979. Forty-one percent said they were reading newspapers at about the same frequency. Twenty-two percent said they read more than one newspaper per day.

Of course, people 18 to 24 (close to what Pew now calls Generation X) found newspapers less essential in 1984 than their elders. Young people were less likely than other age groups to read newspapers regularly (a trend that continued). A 21-year-old secretary was quoted as saying, “The paper is written for my mother, not me” (p. 41).

Following daily news was important.

Readers in 1984 felt a responsibility to keep up with the news. Seventy-seven percent agreed that “I find a greater need to keep up with things and to be better informed than I did in the past” (p. 12). But 43 percent said they were often too busy to keep up with current events. Nevertheless, 60 percent said a newspaper’s main job was to keep the public well-informed about issues of the day.

Readers supported press freedom.

Only 25 percent of people in the 1984 study agreed that “the President has a right to stop a newspaper from publishing a story he feels is biased or inaccurate” (p. 23). Eighty-six percent agreed that “If the government tried to close down a newspaper and stop it from publishing, I’d be upset enough to do something” (p. 23). Seventy-four percent agreed that “It’s important for the public to have the press present when American military forces are sent to another country” (p. 23).

My newspaper is accurate and fair.

Much like today, most people in 1984 thought newspaper reporting, in general, was unfair (57 percent) or biased (53 percent). But 84 percent described the newspapers they read as “most often accurate.” Only 39 percent said they thought the newspaper they read was biased.

The 1984 research study was commissioned by the American Society of Newspaper Editors. The 52-page report updated findings from a 1978 study called “Changing Needs of Newspaper Readers” and covered a wide range of readers’ opinions. Those opinions dealt with not only perceptions of newspapers but also story topics that interested readers, criticisms of newspaper performance (especially compared to television news), the information marketplace, and customer service.

Both reports advised editors and publishers on how newspapers might need to evolve to better serve readers and potential readers. Suggestions in 1984 included:

  • Providing a complete newspaper that balances local, national, and international news.
  • Emphasizing hard news with solid details.
  • Beefing up coverage of business, consumerism, health care, the environment, family, and education.
  • Recognizing that women were interested in sports and business, not just fashion, cooking, and home furnishings.
  • Writing clearly; avoiding “newspeak.”

While many newspapers followed these suggestions, content changes clearly weren’t enough to save the newspaper business from the declines we have seen since 2005.

The 1984 report clearly didn’t envision at least 10 years of partisan attacks on newspaper credibility. Readers in the 1984 study said they found newspaper performance satisfactory in almost every area of interest: hard news, human-interest stories, sports, and entertainment coverage. Eighty-eight percent said they thought their local newspaper really cared about their community.

The 1984 report clearly didn’t foresee how technology would destroy the newspaper business model of the 20th century. Advertising, both display and classified, moved to online delivery channels. Newspaper operating revenue tanked as a result.

The 1984 report clearly didn’t recognize that news reporting would lose value in readers’ eyes. News now flows for free across the internet and through social networks. Fifty-two percent in the February 2026 Pew survey said they were “worn out” by the amount of news they now see. Only 8 percent in a related February Pew study said that individual Americans had a responsibility to pay for news. Only 16 percent of adults in the same study said they had paid for news in the past 12 months.

The “indispensable” newspaper that was such a “bargain” in 1984 (p. 13) is now irrelevant to most Americans. My, how things have changed.

About time

Posted on by Douglas F. Cannon

“Spring forward, fall back” describes how most Americans deal with keeping time. We will “fall back” one hour from daylight saving time to standard time this year in most states Nov. 5. (Arizona and Hawaii are exceptions. They don’t observe daylight time, so residents don’t need to change their clocks.)

The time change makes news each fall and spring—especially because many people want to abandon the routine. An Oct. 20 Washington Post story (“Daylight saving debate shows there’s no perfect time”), for example, rehashed the pros and cons of daylight saving time.

The story said that since 2019, at least 23 states have tried to abandon the practice of changing clocks each fall and spring. Four have considered remaining on standard time all year. The Uniform Time Act of 1966, which formalized when we change our clocks each year, allows states to choose that option.

Another 19 states want to remain on daylight saving time all year. That move would require Congressional action to change the 1966 law.

The U.S. Senate, with bipartisan support, passed the Sunshine Protection Act in 2022. It would authorize states to choose either permanent standard or daylight time. The House didn’t act on that measure last year. Consequently, the legislation was reintroduced in the Senate this year.

The clock change is not my issue

Those debates are background noise to me. I have no strong opinions about moving clocks back and forth each spring and fall. But the attention to daylight saving time always evokes another strong time-related emotion in me: A visceral annoyance about the westward creep of the Eastern time zone.

Source: https://gisgeography.com/us-time-zone-map/

I fully acknowledge that my feelings are irrational. No one cares what I think about this topic. Time zone boundaries are not an issue for most people. I cannot influence the situation or what people think about it. Nevertheless, I stew each fall and spring about the current unnatural Eastern time zone boundary. The current time zone map violates my sensibilities.

I was surprised this summer to see in a collection of stories by American humorist James Thurber that he had captured how I feel today in an Oct. 3, 1942, New Yorker article. Thurber described a gathering of journalists in a Columbus, Ohio, restaurant around 1920:

“We would sit around for an hour, drinking coffee, telling stories, drawing pictures on the tablecloth, and giving imitations of the most eminent Ohio political figures of the day, many of whom fanned their soup with their hats but had enough good, old-fashioned horse sense to realize that a proposal to shift clocks in the state from Central to Eastern standard time was directly contrary to the will of the Lord God Almighty and that the supporters of the project would burn in hell.”

The comment was funny in 1942 because Ohio had moved from Central to Eastern time in 1927. I agree, however, with the Ohio political figures Thurber described. That move “was directly contrary to the will of the Lord God Almighty.” Indiana extended the offense to my sensibilities in the 1960s. Indiana moved the Eastern time zone boundary to the middle of the state in 1961 and to the Illinois state line in 1969.

Except for six counties in the northwest corner and another six counties in the southwest corner, Indiana is now on the same time as New York and Washington, not Chicago, the traditional commercial center for the Midwestern agriculture market, of which Indiana is a part. That arrangement doesn’t make sense to me—especially when we consider when the sun rises and sets in Indiana.

Central time originally started much farther east

The Standard Time Act of 1918 originally drew a large Central time zone. The eastern side included portions of western New York and western Pennsylvania; all of Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee; most of Georgia, and all of Florida.

Because of when the sun rises and sets throughout the year, I always thought that having all of Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee in the Central time zone made sense. Central time coincided more closely with what I considered the natural range of daylight. Of course, policymakers disagreed. They saw some commercial advantage to having all or parts of these states on the same time as New York and Washington. Consequently, the time zone boundary crept west.

Today, the Central time zone boundary runs roughly along the Wisconsin and Illinois state lines (with carve-outs in northwest and southwest Indiana), through western Kentucky and east-central Tennessee, and down the Alabama state line toward the Gulf of Mexico. The Florida Panhandle is mostly in the Central time zone.

Between 1969 and 2006, Indiana compounded the time-zone confusion for me. Like Arizona and Hawaii, Indiana didn’t observe daylight saving time. Consequently, the state appeared to be in the Eastern time zone during the winter and the Central time zone during the summer. Eastern Standard Time is the same as Central Daylight Time from March through October.

October sunrises and sunsets in Indiana and eastern Kentucky are too late for me

In 2006, Indiana decided to observe daylight saving time. I experienced the results of that decision between 2008 and 2010 when my daughter attended graduate school at Indiana State University in Terre Haute. That city sits a few miles east of the Illinois state line. I visited Terre Haute regularly throughout those years. During October—just be for the “fall back” date—the sun would come up after 8 a.m.

My wife and I happened to be in Terre Haute in 2022 on the weekend of the fall time change. The experience annoyed me all over again. The sun rose at 8:21 a.m. and set at 6:45 p.m. EDT Nov. 5. The sun rose at 7:22 a.m. and set at 5:44 p.m. EST Nov. 6. Just a few miles west across the Wabash River in Illinois, the sun rose and set one hour earlier both days in Central time. The Central sunrise and sunset times were more in line, according to my sensibilities, “with the will of the Lord God Almighty” for the rhythm of a late fall day in that part of the world.

Indiana isn’t alone in its daylight irregularities. Kentucky has similar issues, in my opinion. When I was stationed at Fort Knox (1977-1981), I lived in Meade County and worked in Hardin County. Both were in Eastern time. Immediately to the west, Breckinridge and Grayson counties were in the Central time zone.

The original 1918 Central time zone line ran along the Kentucky-West Virginia state line—about 250 miles to the east. Consequently, much as I did in Terre Haute, I experienced many late fall sunrises and sunsets at Fort Knox. They bothered me.

Policymakers have adjusted boundaries for the Mountain and Pacific time zones since 1918, too. Because I have never lived in those time zones, I haven’t thought about the consequences of those changes. But the boundary shifts don’t look as drastic—or as unnatural—as the westward creep of the Eastern time zone.

I can’t shake these thoughts

I don’t know why I can’t get past my exasperation with expanding Eastern time. The emotion has persisted even though I have not lived or worked in Indiana or Kentucky since 1984. Driving trips between Texas and Virginia several times a year since 2010 rekindle my annoyance each time I encounter the time zone boundary farther west in Tennessee than I think is proper. The vexation intensifies at this time of year with each news story or reminder about the coming time change—even though those messages have nothing to do with the time zones. I, nonetheless, think of the folks in Terre Haute who must wait two hours longer than they should for the sun to come up.

In retirement, I have become an even grumpier old man than I was before.

Copyright © 2023 Douglas F. Cannon