Now when I told my friend E. about this over lunch today, she immediately asked a very good question. What’s the idea behind a site like Zap a Day? Obviously, it’s always going to be half-parody, but is it all comedy or is there a deeper message? So we started thinking. Perhaps Zap a Day shows us how little ‘new’ our ‘news’ actually is? Indeed, when you think about it, much of the news is actually quite predictable and logical. If you know there’s going to be a certain issue on the parliamentary agenda, it’s quite easy to predict what party x or politician y is going to say about it, how the votes will be cast, or what certain journalists will write about it in the newspaper. In this way, it seems neither the news nor the news coverage is very new anymore.
When I rode the train home from work, the subject kept going through my head, and I was suddenly reminded of an idea I’ve often toyed with before. As a regular reader of newspapers on the one hand and news sites and blogs on the other hand, I’ve noticed that newspapers are really in no position anymore to compete with online journalism. Indeed, in our modern world in general, and in the news business in particular, nothing is as important as speed. In the past announcers used to stand on corners every morning, shouting: ‘Yesterday’s plain crash. Read all about it in today’s paper!’. But of course, nowadays that’s ridiculous. Most events can be read about minutes after they’ve happened, and through Twitter - which is rapidly becoming the leading journalistic media channel - even as they’re happening. It seems inevitable, therefore, that the printed newspaper is going to go the way of the dodo.
I must say that I don’t particularly like the idea of that - there’s something quite heavenly about the weekend’s paper with a cup of coffee on a lazy Sunday morning - but still it seems inescapable. Or is it? Personally I do believe that newspapers will continue to exist for quite some time, but obviously they’re going to have to change. Already they’ve shifted from focussing on news coverage per se, to opinion pieces, magazine-esk spreads about tourism or food, and essays on culture. But is there something more we can do?
Well, this is where my little idea comes in. Somewhat similarly to Zap a Day, I’ve often wondered about the notion of a newspaper that doesn’t cover today’s news, but that of one year ago. Zap a Year, if you will. Indeed, to me the printed page is predominantly a space to study (my friend E. attended me to that too!), so it would be the ideal environment not for trying to compete with Twitter or news sites, but for the deeper analysis of significant events in the past. In this way, we could create a crossing between a newspaper and a history book. That’s it: The History Paper.
For instance, one year ago, on Wednesday 12 January 2011, a big story in the news was a wake organised for the victims of the most recent US school shooting, in Arizona. Even President Obama and his wife Michele were present. In the articles about the topic, commentators raised the issue of gun possession in the US and its citizens’ trigger-happy mentality. However, due to the Japanese tsunami and the nuclear disaster in Fukushima that soon followed, this topic of the Arizona school shooting was completely drowned (pardon the pun) in other, more pressing news. But today I would like to know - one year after - what really happened in the end. How many people did end up losing their lives? Because we often only hear about those dying on the day itself, not about those in hospital fighting for their lives in the days, weeks, months after. Have new measures been taken in the US schools to prevent something like that happening? Has it happened again since the incident in Arizona? Etcetera.
There were many things in the news on 12-01-11 that I’d like to know the outcome of today. Like the charges brought against Julian Assange of Wikileaks. Does anyone remember what ultimately happened to that guy? Or the death of Johan Vande Lannotte’s mother, precisely when he had to lead the intense debates about the formation of our government. Discussed on a full two-page spread on 12-01-11, but completely forgotten by 12-01-12.
Unless by Vande Lannotte himself, of course. And by his family, who probably miss their grandmother. And by her husband, who was left to go on by himself. Or had he already passed too? I don’t know.
Let’s tell these stories. In a well-researched, nuanced paper that occasionally will rub off ink on your hands. Wouldn’t that be nice?
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