هل بدأ عصر جديد في الصحافة ؟ ٢_a .. كتاب صحافة الغد

Of the 19 widely distributed London newspapers, at least ten are in a financial deficit that threatens them with closure. The Sun daily newspaper (the newspaper of the Workers' Party) was discontinued, while its circulation had reached 1,273,000 copies per day. The world-famous Guardian newspaper - a competitor to the newspaper - was also forced to lay off many of its workers and employees, and tightened its belt, and its situation did not improve. Many journalists and workers are still losing their jobs day after day. It is known that the British press was one of the most prosperous newspapers in the world, then it began to lose its readers in the last ten years, losing ten million buyers. That is, an average of one million buyers every year.

Cecil King (owner of the Daily Mirror - 5 million copies per day - and several hundred magazines) stated that (there will soon remain only four or five morning newspapers in the British capital due to the lack of development of these newspapers).

The French magazine Express published in its January 1967 issue, saying: In the face of this dangerous situation, British newspaper managers asked one of the major private economic bodies to analyze the problem of the economic crisis and lack of distribution.
The ruling was harsh on the British press. The Authority stated that the main causes of the crisis are:

1- Bad management.
2- Unions’ actions.
3- The rapid rise in the prices of journalistic industry materials.
4- Lack of success in television competition.

And solutions:

1 - The need to rethink (everything).
2 - Following modern methods of printing and management. Then comes the statement of Herr Axel Springer, the owner of the largest newspaper house in Germany, to put the dots above the letters: (Newspapers have one of two choices: either they will gather in large companies or extend their hand to financial aid from the government.)

Then comes another opinion that adds its voice to the rest, and it is the opinion of one of the major unions in Britain (which includes 225,000 semi-specialized workers in journalistic work that is threatened by machinery and electronic minds). This opinion demands that the state be a body that includes all newspapers that are threatened with closure and ensures their survival. . They say in their report: (Most newspapers are owned by envious and individualistic men, who refuse to listen to any advisors, and have a reactionary philosophy of management). This body completely rejects any change in the rules that were established after the unemployment crisis in 1929 that threatened British workers. According to these rules, unions have the authority to decide the minimum number of workers in each newspaper, regardless of the development or technological progress in the printing industry.

Here some wonder: Does this crisis have an impact on the journalism industry and its progress in the Arab Republic? Egyptian experts say that developing countries will not be exposed to these problems that exist in technologically advanced countries, because development in developing countries does not necessarily require going through the same stages that rich countries went through, because that requires hundreds of years, which makes developing countries constantly lagging behind countries. The major countries that have begun to move with great strides towards progress. Therefore, the small countries will jump several levels at once without going through the natural development that begins from the ordinary worker to the semi-specialized worker and then to the specialized (technical) worker. This is due to the lack of a sufficient number of semi-specialized workers. To perform the work required currently. As a result of this shortage, it has become necessary to jump from the class of the ordinary worker to the class of the technical worker - that is, entering the age of electronics - and this age requires a smaller number of manpower, the problem that we actually suffer from. Thus, the ordinary worker can be trained to raise him to the class of the specialized worker without To dispense with the role of the semi-specialized worker, who is required to be present for a period of time that is not short, until his term ends with retirement. Thus, we can reach this development and catch up with the global pace of progress without harming the worker’s interest. On the contrary, we will create a new generation of trained workers.”

As for the United States, what is happening there? . Has the crisis reached its peak, as happened in Britain?

New York newspapers were also not spared the consequences of the electronic minds crisis and the demands of workers regarding it. The New York Post newspaper threatened to stop publishing unless it was able to reduce expenses by using the electronic brain in the assembly halls. But the International Letter Collectors Union stood before them with determination and demanded - in the event that the electronic mind is introduced into the newspaper - that they should receive 50% of any wage savings. After introducing this new system, the newspaper was forced to stop the operation of the electronic device after one week of use, under the threat of a strike by machine workers. The newspaper returned to using old adding machines.

As for the World Journal Tribune, which had a circulation of 700,000 copies, it ceased publication in early May 1967, leaving 2,528 unemployed people behind. This newspaper was suffering from a severe financial crisis in the year preceding its cessation, so it merged with the Herald Tribune and two other newspapers. It was published in one newspaper, so that it could withstand this crisis. Not a year had passed until this company, which represented 134 years of journalistic efforts, stopped due to the huge financial losses it suffered, amounting to $700,000 a month. No sooner had this newspaper announced its cessation than the New York Post, the only evening newspaper in New York, raised its advertising price by 20%, and The Daily News raised its price from 7 cents to 8 cents. As for the New York Times, it did not announce any changes. Rather, it is considering publishing an evening newspaper.

This problem did not prevent newspaper publishers from returning to demanding automatic work in order to survive.

In New York, only two morning newspapers - out of the six major newspapers published in the city - make a profit. These two newspapers are “The Times” and “The News.” The number of lines of advertisements published in The Times reached 81 million lines in 1966, an increase of 12.5 million lines over the year 1965.

Regional newspapers have already begun to introduce the new system into their major halls, and there are now about a hundred newspapers using the electronic mind system without meeting resistance from their workers. Therefore, American publishers predict that this automatic mechanism must eventually invade New York City, sooner or later.

Outside of New York - from California to Florida - electronic machines began to invade newspapers, and the sounds of automatic tape punching began to rise in the newsrooms.

The Times newspaper, published in Los Angeles, went further. I have tried to use machines that allow the journalist himself to write his article on a typewriter, which outputs a written copy along with a punched tape that is sent to the electronic device. But the experiment was not successful, as the editors revolted against the machines and were unable to work on them. The other problem, which is the workers’ resistance to using these devices, has not found a place in this country. The assembly halls do not include union workers, and the unions have no authority over them. The departments were able to train their workers on tape punching machines without meeting any significant opposition. This happened at a time when another newspaper, the New York Daily News, tried to work with the new system in 1963, but the Union of Collective Workers stood in its way again and opposed the introduction of machines and threatened to stop working, despite the newspaper’s promise not to fire any of the workers and to reserve the electronic brain to operate. . The union also required newspaper publishers in New York (the Post is not a member) to put 63% of any savings into the union fund. The publishers refused and the problem remained unresolved.

Stanford Smit, Director General of the Newspaper Publishers Association, said at the meeting of the International Federation of Newspaper Publishers held in Munich in May 1965, that the idea of ​​an automatic mechanism is not a new idea, and it is not as evil as some imagine. This topic has sparked great controversy in America, and the study that revolved around it was minimal, which led to the creation of serious problems. We have concluded from what we have read that the situation in many other countries is completely similar to the situation in America. We find that the fear of the word (automatic mechanism) is in fact a bigger problem than all the facts about the possibilities of the so-called automatic mechanism. Webster's International Dictionary explains it as “a device, performance, or system process controlled by automatic mechanical or electronic devices that replace human organs that carry out monitoring, effort, and decision-making.” We can trace the “automatic mechanism” back to the industrial revolution caused by the steam engine and the spinning machine nearly two centuries ago. Modern devices have been invented that save workers, but we now realize that new technology has increased workers' productive power, reduced prices, reduced expenses and increased human comfort. While the phrase “spontaneous mechanism” has become a familiar phrase used by social scientists and others, there is evidence that this phrase has been used at least since 1935 to describe the continuing progress of scientific technology. It was invented by John Diebold, who established a consulting office to help companies use modern technology.

But the discussions surrounding this phrase have been greatly distorted and misinterpreted to the point that it has become a phrase that causes fear to many workers, as it suggests to them an image of rows of machines replacing workers, and this is a big mistake.

The truth of the matter is that advanced technology has helped one industry after another to improve their products and expand their markets, with the result that more, not fewer, people have found work. There is no indication that the technological impact on newspapers will be different from its impact on other industries.

Some sociologists say that the automatic mechanism causes the loss of about 40,000 jobs per week in the United States, and the truth is that employment actually increased by 1,500,000 people in 1964 over the previous year, and this cannot be