There’s just something different about holding a newspaper in your hands instead of reading it online.
The physical newspaper is a treasure trove of unexpected information. At first glance, you can obviously see what’s important to editors on a front page. But you don’t know what you’re going to learn when you start flipping pages.
And learn you will. You could discover news about some fresh conflict in another part of the world, a rescue story in Texas, news about the death of someone who touched your life or a quirky story about someone’s pet alligator.
The point is this: The physical act of turning pages in a newspaper is an intellectual treat. It’s a great way to learn about your community and nation in random ways that are not controlled by some Internet algorithm. Reading unexpected stories connects you in new ways to your home and neighbors.
Newspapers also provide a place every week or day where you can keep up with what your local, state and national governments are doing – or not doing. Newspapers are the great, longer-than-TV snippets that allow you to dive more deeply into a topic. They are, in one sense, the antithesis of Instagram or Facebook with their often misleading scraps of information spread by people who are trying to spin this or sell that – instead of focusing on truth and accountability.
Unfortunately for America, newspapers are withering. In Atlanta, the storied Journal-Constitution no longer prints a daily edition, now only showing up online. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette will close operations in May after two centuries of publications. And this week, we learned about cuts of more than 300 journalists at the legendary Washington Post – a decimation that will cripple its sports and international news coverage and make the newspaper a shell of its former bullishness.
This loss is much the same in weeklies across the nation. Between 2005 and 2025, some 2,843 non-daily newspapers closed, leaving 4,482 non-daily newspapers. In South Carolina, two counties – Allendale and Saluda – don’t have a local print news outlet, according to a Northwestern University tracking study.
Other papers that used to be daily, such as in Greenwood or Sumter, now print on just two or three days a week. And many weeklies have lost so much advertising revenue that their print editions are shadows of their former selves.
All of this goes to highlight the slow demise of newspapers and how that appears to be a symptom of what’s going on in a country where democracy and freedom are being challenged by intolerant, unfree, authoritarian Americans.
A vital, free press is essential for American democracy to thrive by observing and challenging what elected leaders are doing. Having a vibrant, free press delivers a truthful check on bad leaders – the number of whom have multiplied like gnats in the last year of the Trump administration. A free press bolsters accountability to ensure people are doing what they say they’re doing (too often, they aren’t).
Newspaper reporting isn’t going to go away. They’ll keep adapting somehow. And we hope they’ll continue to mostly be published in print – despite it being an inefficient medium. Because you never know what you’ll read when you turn the page.
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of the Charleston City Paper and Statehouse Report. Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
McCorkle: The Ten Commandments bill won’t actually do much
Commentary by Will McCorkle | A bill at the Statehouse (H. 4762) that would require the Ten Commandments in every South Carolina classroom jumped its first hurdle on Jan. 21 when a House Judiciary subcommittee favorably approved it to the full committee for consideration.
Too bad. It’s a performative bill. Why? Because it seeks to appeal to a deeply conservative religious base but will do little to actually change public attitudes, much less make society more ethical. It has lots of troubling issues from constitutional and Christian perspectives.
From a constitutional perspective, it’s clear that there should not be the promotion of any one religious view in the public schools. The First Amendment states clearly and directly that “Congress should make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” It was for this reason that policies mandating school prayer and the display of the Ten Commandments were ruled unconstitutional in the 20th century.
There will be those who say this bill is not necessarily about promoting one religion but rather about universal principles. However, that’s simply not true. While there is, of course, general agreement on some values, such as not stealing and not committing murder, commandments about “having no other gods before me” or “not making graven images” and observing the Sabbath are certainly not held by every member of America’s diverse, pluralistic society.
This proposal is also deeply curious from a Christian perspective since the overwhelming majority of those pushing this law are professing Christians. But the center of the Christian faith is not the Ten Commandments. The center is the teachings of Jesus.
The famous American writer, Kurt Vonnegut, put it so well when he said, “For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. ‘Blessed are the merciful’ in a courtroom? ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ in the Pentagon?”
Much of the rest of the American society and the global community may also see the complete hypocrisy of the current Republican Party clinging to the Ten Commandments while unapologetically supporting a leader who is a serial adulterer who bears false witness almost every day, has brazenly cheated on his taxes, failed to pay his workers and seems to be covetous about almost everything.
This is also the same party that is defending the killing of anti-ICE protesters. Perhaps Republicans in South Carolina should try to do a little self-examination before forcing the Ten Commandments on the rest of society in a performative stunt that will do very little but drive more division in our state’s culture wars and undermine the Constitution.
I think if Jesus were here, he would care far less about whether the Ten Commandments were in schoolhouses than about whether his own followers are living out his teachings, especially when it comes to caring for the poor, the outcast and immigrants. Perhaps the South Carolina GOP should focus a little more on those issues.
Will McCorkle of Summerville is a professor at a Charleston college. This commentary first appeared in the Charleston City Paper.
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