Outdoors Writers Left Out in the Cold
The best reward I got from 30 years of writing outdoors columns at the Washington Post, besides the biweekly paycheck, was the occasional letter from someone who wasn’t particularly interested in fishing, hunting, boating or my other subjects, but said they liked the column anyway. It took them places they wouldn’t otherwise go, and they enjoyed going there.
That’s one thing we’ve lost with the demise of newspapers–the chance to go to interesting places we’d never think to go to and see things we’d never experience through the eyes of someone we have come to trust, for a few pennies a day.
A few newspapers continue to fill this role, but not many, and not for pennies a day. Chances are your local paper has dropped or severely curtailed some or all of the specialists in arcane subjects who used to adorn their pages–the outdoor writer, independent local restaurant columnist, environmental writer, chess guru, travel writer, music critic, movie reviewer, automobile columnist, fashion photographer, health reporter, social critic, political analyst, and so on.
Newspapers once struggled to find enough interesting editorial content to fill the space around the boundless array of advertisements they attracted. They were looking for good copy and willing to pay for it. Readers and writers were the beneficiaries.
But advertisers have fled to new media, and there is much less space and no money left for frills. With a few rare exceptions–brave outliers trying to keep the flag flying through hard times–papers are down to bare bones. They cover politics, crime, major sports, a bit of social life, and on Sundays maybe throw in a few long features. But the days of the newspaper shining its light into dark and quirky corners is all but over.
Of course, as long as fish swim, birds fly and boats float, somebody’s going to write about the outdoors. Where? Well, specialty publications are still around: Magazines devoted to fishing, hunting, boating, hiking and other outdoor sports are full of information. And niche websites are easy to find.
What isn’t available is the sort of independent, reliable, honest reporting that used to come in a hundred different forms in a thriving daily newspaper. Prosperous newspapers had the financial wherewithal to pay reporters to go out and see the world from an independent perspective, owing allegiance to nothing but the truth. The Washington Post and other top papers drew a hard line between advertisers and news staff, so advertisers and other power-brokers did not influence what reporters covered, nor what they had to say.
Niche magazines unfortunately rely on the same people they cover–the boat manufacturers, hunting lodge operators, ski mountains, fishing camps–to pay the costs of reporting, and they can’t as easily afford to bite the hand that feeds them. Accuracy and honesty suffer.
As for websites, who knows the origins of what gets said on a website? Crazy people have the same access as Rhodes Scholars.
A good newspaper, with its broad brush, its allegiance to honesty and its extensive, independent resources, gave readers the chance to peer into places they might never otherwise go, including the great outdoors. You never knew what you might find on the next page, and if it was interesting and well written, you could take the plunge and learn something new. It might change your life; more likely it just made your day a little richer.
I was honored to have a space in the newspaper to do that sort of work on Tuesdays and Sundays, and wish I could read more stories like the ones I used to write in the four papers I get delivered to the house. But they rarely appear anymore, and frankly, I don’t know where else to find them.
