Ed Bell speaks to Marblehead on state of the media

MARBLEHEAD-Veteran newsman Ed Bell lost no time telling an audience the bad news Sunday afternoon.Speaking at a Marblehead League of Women Voters discussion of “The Future of the Media” at the Cliff Street home of Phyllis McCarthy, Bell listed the circulation decline in a number of major newspapers: Los Angeles Times 11 percent, Boston Globe 18 percent, San Francisco Chronicle 26 percent and USA Today 17 percent.Bell is the former bureau chief for The Associated Press in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. He is a Peabody native who began his career in New England journalism as a newspaper reporter in 1958. Before joining AP, Bell was managing editor of WHDH-TV and news director of WHDH Radio and WBZ Radio, all in Boston. He was a 1992 recipient of the Yankee Quill award for distinguished New England journalism.It came as no surprise that he had observations on television news as well as print journalism.?The TV news audience is skewing older,” he said. As an indicator, he listed a number of pharmaceutical products that advertise on news programs, most of them geared toward older people.Replacing newspapers transitionally are the on-line news sources Bell referred to as “the Fifth Estate.”He pointed out that those sources so far are using traditional Fourth Estate reporting as their source of news and don?t employ any reporters. “If the Fourth Estate goes away who will cover the news?” he said.Bell was joined at the discussion by award-winning Marblehead Reporter Editor Kris Olson, who said people ask him if newspapers will still exist 20 years from now. “The smart money would probably say, ?No,” he said, “but the organizations that produce them will probably still exist.”Referring to the Internet and the 24-hour news cycle as the driving forces behind the changes in the news media, Bell pointed out that the Internet can give widespread access to “anyone with an ax to grind.”?Truth goes out the window,” he said, “and polarization is growing. But the League of Women Voters is proof of what can happen when people are pro-active instead of being re-active.”One audience member asked how people can help the media to survive.?Buy from their advertisers,” Bell said. “Tell the advertisers you saw their ad. And subscribe.”