Why newspapers matter, still

Seattle's recent snowbound mess offered an object lesson in why newspapers remain essential to communities. With analysts expecting several major newspapers to shut down in 2009, including those in one-paper cities, it's worth noting what happened in the Emerald City.

A little background: On Dec. 18, it began snowing here, even at sea-level downtown. Snow is a rarity in this city of hills — even though enough falls to stick every three years or so. This was reportedly the worst snowfall in a dozen years. We got about six inches downtown, and it was far worse in other parts of Seattle. The city has 27 snowplows. The city was paralyzed.

For a few days, it was a nice break. Businesses closed. Workers enjoyed the unexpected holiday. As more snow fell and the streets remained impassable, the fun factor went away. A particular frustration was the extensive bus system, which couldn't navigate most streets, even with chains. Entire parts of the city were cut off for days.

Then the newspapers started doing what newspapers used to do, before they were dumbed down into "news you can use" and other drivel. The Seattle Times published a story explaining the city's "strategy" in refusing to use salt and employing snowplows with rubber-tipped blades that only compacted the snow. This latter method made the streets as rough to drive as unimproved roads in the wilderness, and much more dangerous in an urban setting. The paper called this what it was, "the city's spin."

In fact, a follow-up story interviewing scientists explained, the sand used to compact the snow was much more environmentally problematic than using salt as little as would be required in Seattle. In the meantime, Joel Connelly, the columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, jumped in, calling the city to account. As opposed to the anodyne metro columnists that papers have put forward in recent years, Connelly wrote old school: "It's time to get angry about city's response to snow," headlined one column. Two days later, he came back with another column demanding that the city stop foot-dragging. He made the essential point that the city was not even clearing snow on critical arterial streets.

Both papers kept up the coverage, which sparked a big community conversation on the comments sections of their Web sites, as well. The stories were picked up by television and radio — but only because of the original, and expert, reporting of the paid professional (union) journalists at the newspapers. Within a couple of days, the plows were out clearing the snow. The streets improved, literally overnight in some places.

There's much to discuss from this event, from the need to demand competent government whichever party is in power, to yet another downside of having a transit system so dependent on buses. But it especially underscored the essential role of good newspapers in the life of a community. Only the newspapers had the large readership, wide distribution, authoritative and original reporting, and well-known columnist to push the issue to resolution. On a local level, few blogs or broadcasters (under today's formats) can claim a similar power on such an issue — indeed, I can't think of one example aside from the occasional gotcha.

Both Seattle papers operated outside the groupthink of recent years: They crusaded. They followed up. They let a columnist get angry. They reported authoritatively and in depth, not settling for one-source press releases or he said/she said nothings. Not surprisingly to us newsosaurs, they got results. None of this fixes the broken business model — but, then, an aggressive, expert news operation was never the problem.

Fitch Ratings and Lauren Rich Fine, the former Merrill Lynch analyst now at ContentNext and Kent State University, predict that several newspapers may close next year. I'm not as worried about Seattle, which remains a two newspaper town and also has the independent Stranger weekly and a strong local news blog, Crosscut.com. But so many cities lack these assets; many already suffer content-lite newspapers that are barely worthy of the name. These cities will be wounded on issues far more critical than a December snowfall.