Newspapers are losing their social currency

I like Jack Shafer and this piece of his has some real resonance for me. He talks about how newspapers traditionally offered readers a form of social currency (explained more below) that’s increasingly being lost to social networks such as Facebook.

Not that long ago, the daily newspaper was an indispensable coiner of social currency, and it gave its readers piles of the stuff in each edition. The phrase, which comes from sociology, is often used to describe the information we acquire and then trade—or give away—to start, maintain, and nurture relationships with our fellow humans.

Take, for instance, the voluminous results of newspaper sports pages. Terrific for sports fans, of course, but the sports pages have been used to grease sales calls, break ice on first dates, and fuel water-cooler bonding for a century. Even folks who don’t care for sports skimmed the sports pages for a little something about the games and athletes so they could engage in essential small-talk.

For as long as anybody can remember, the newspaper has been the primary info-hub through which people interacted. Oh, people might have talked to the shoe-shine man or their broker about what they heard on the radio or saw on television, but nothing could beat the newspaper as a source for socially lubricating conversation. How many times have you heard a conversation start, “Didja see that article …”?

… Other institutions do far better jobs at issuing social currency these days. What is Facebook but the Federal Reserve Bank of social currency? And it’s all social currency you can use! Like cocktail chatter, a Facebook posting—be it a link, a list, a photo, or travel plans—conveys the message, I am here. Listen to me.

A well-executed Facebook presence, like a superb pontification at the bar or a great phone-in to sports talk radio, demonstrates one’s status within one’s existing social network. If skillfully wielded, a Facebook page can increase a person’s status by attracting “cooler” or more influential friends. These days, you can’t raise your status more than a bump by carrying the Wall Street Journal under your arm.

Shafer also points to a great post from UK blogger Adrian Monck who lays the blame for the decline of newspapers squarely at the door of lifestyle changes (as opposed to anything inherently wrong with the way journalism is being carried out):

The crops did not fail because we offended the gods.

The problems journalists are confronting are to do with the changing social habits of people who once purchased newspapers and were thus appealing to advertisers.

I agree with Adrian and think his post is well worth a read.