John Singleton, “The Death of the Newspaper,”
Advertising News, May 26, 1972, p. 4.

In Sydney the printers won’t work for Packer, Murdoch or Fairfax.

They want more brass, but the brass won’t pay more brass.

The usual crap.

The papers still stagger out, thinner and less predictable than ever.

The printers make vague threats. The journalists make vague threats.

The proprietors make vague threats, confirmed and denied, that if the journos come out the papers fold down.

And the whole time the point that everyone overlooks is that the public don’t think it is really all that important anyway.

And that is the most important part of the whole plot.

You see it is another sign of the slow but certain death of mass communications as we know them today.

To demonstrate the point let’s look at the United States, where, in a very similar society, we see our own trends magnified many times over so that they become clearer to us all.

Since 1955 the population of the United States has grown by 35 million people.

In that time the number of daily newspapers has actually declined.

In New York where there were seven daily newspapers, today there are three.

And what ever happened to the magazines: Liberty, Colliers, Saturday Evening Post, Look?

Even Ladies’ Home Journal and McCalls have both admitted that they can only survive if they merge. Which is really just procrastination.

And what ever happened to the idea that it was the right of the people to have access to information?

In 1955 in the United States a newspaper cost a cent. Today The New York Times costs $115 per year home delivered. Magazines that cost 15c in 1955 now cost $1. Inflation hasn’t grown that fast.

The major mass market just can’t afford newspapers and magazines. Even if they wanted them.

Radio audiences have not grown in proportion to population.

And that leaves us with TV which is to all intents and purposes “nationalised” in the United States as it is here.

Really all that happens here in Australia is that the Government hands over the day-to-day running of some of “its” airwaves to various licensees. But they are about as free as Darcy Dugan to control the messages that these airwaves carry.

So much percentage must be Australian content, so much maximum for advertising, so much for religion, so much equal time for political broadcasts. So much crap. It is bad here, worse in the U.S. But not much worse.

The situation in both countries is dangerous.

Mass communications are increasingly in jeopardy. The mass market just cannot afford, and rejects mass communications with the exception of TV and TV is not free.

The potential of the communication-less society is as real as it is frightening.

The Sydney printers’ strike won’t hasten the day or even hurt all that much.

But it won’t help either.