PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

Like many of you, I grew up holding newspapers in my hands – yes, the ink rubbed off – and I loved doing it.

So much so that I followed one of my dreams, which was to become a newspaper reporter.

When newspapers no longer exist, it will be a sad day for me because, while I do read some newspapers on-line, I also love having newsprint in my hands. My kids are different; they rarely have newspapers at their fingertips. So much for the differences in generations.

National Public Radio posted this part of a blog the other day:

“In a way, Jim Romenesko has become a newspaper obituary writer — except he doesn’t write obituaries of people, he chronicles the demise of American newspapers.

For National Public Radio, “it’s Romenesko’s job to cull through the news of the media industry and post stories of interest. Because of the acceleration of dead and dying dailies in the country, Romenesko’s blog has turned into a scrolling roll call of bad news. He links to story after story describing the shifting journalistic landscape.

“For many readers who love newspapers, it’s a sad state of affairs. If you clicked on Romenesko — as the blog is popularly known — over the past few days, here is essentially what you saw: “Washington Post profit falls 77 per cent in fourth quarter,” “Will Rupert Murdoch end up owning the New York Times and Los Angeles Times?” “Hearst says it will sell or close the San Francisco Chronicle if cuts aren’t made in a hurry,” “Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News owner files for bankruptcy protection.”

“And that’s only a few of the entries.

“Sprinkled among the list of sick-and-shut-in big-city newspapers were notices of others that are ailing and failing, such as the 150-year-old Rocky Mountain News, which published its last issue Friday. And an announcement that the American Society of Newspaper Editors has canceled its 2009 convention in April because of stress within the industry. And a slew of raging debates about whether newspapers can be saved, where news will come from in the future and how it will be delivered.”

Well, if you are a newspaper lover and looking for some good news, there was just a bit in a recent edition of the Wall Street Journal. Several letters to the editor were written by young people to offer praise and perspective on a piece by Barton Swaim, which was entitled, “In Praise of the News On Paper.”

One letter said this: “In the 24-hour news cycle, even the reputable on-line outlets have to constantly create new stories and headlines, which leads directly to the always reading, never-informed cycle Mr. Swaim describes. A hard paper is the distilling of that chaos in which the facts as they are, and sometimes informed opinions about those facts, can be digested in a sitting. I suspect consuming news this way also limits the propensity toward outrage and contention that following constantly “breaking news” online seems to engender. That is a thinking individual’s way to consume news, rather than a reactionary’s method. Whether ‘the news on paper’ will persevere, depends entirely on whether we thinking individuals do so.”

This was from Vince Skolny from Los Angeles.

Or, this from another writer, Melissa Lee from Sugar Land, Texas:

“I’m a high-school student. Flipping through each page of the paper exposes me to articles on a variety of topics. In contrast, scrolling through digital news triggers an onslaught of algorithms catered to personal preferences. Follow the trails of “You may also like” and soon all the information on the webpage aligns with one’s individual views.

“A broad understanding of current affairs is best gained from reading the news in print and will help prevent the “echo chamber” and “confirmation bias” that afflict our society.”

It’s worth reading these letters and appreciating the points they make, which is that it is better to be educated by reading words on paper than it is to rely solely on the Internet.

Now, of course the Internet is not bad. It provides a wider scope of information every day than I would otherwise have in my minds, but it also is important to keep in mind the advice in the last letter above – “scrolling through digital news triggers an onslaught of algorithms catered to personal preferences.”

That’s not real news.

So, as newspaper continue to die in this country, use the Internet, but keep it as one source of information and perspective, not the only source.