The Demise of “The Newstand”
The business section of today’s Bellingham Herald has a story of the imminent closure of a newsstand business that offers around 3400 titles of magazines and out-of-town newspapers, as well as a selection of books, maps, and other items. While a lot of people might not get excited about the closure of a single business in Bellingham, I think the trend of the downfall of this type of store is a shame.
The store is not closing for lack of customers. There are plenty of people looking to expand their horizons and fulfill their reading needs by patronizing this store. The issue is that the company offering the wholesale magazine service is now only willing to work with larger customers and higher volume titles, thus giving the reading public a much smaller selection of reading material.
There are certainly people who are content with the few dozen or few hundred titles available at the grocery store or the chain bookstore. Nothing wrong with that. It’s just that there are a lot of interesting things to do and read about in the world. This outlet provided the conduit between those who write about things and ideas not necessarily in the mainstream and those with a thirst for knowledge.
I celebrate the fact that businesses like Ira Stohl’s “The Newstand” exist. There is a whole world of information out there, and much of it is hard to find. The information in the publications are a wealth of information that a person can explore. If you like the subject, it can expand your knowledge. If you find out it wasn’t as interesting as you thought, you are only out a few dollars, and you still got to expand your mind a bit.
Sure, there is a lot of information out there on the Internet for the taking. It will be said that the paper magazine is an anachronism and that such information is widely available online. This might be true, but only to a point. There are experiences that are lost between the paper periodical and the online information. Online I might be able to find a specific article. A whole magazine or newspaper offers you related items and information that you might not have thought of. It offers you other information and even advertisements that will help put your article into context. Print is certainly old technology, but it is a type of art form that you can’t really get through electronic means.
There is no comparison to being able to see and feel a real paper book or magazine, to hold it on the bus or on your couch at home, to see other related information in the magazine that can give you even more ideas. And it will be a long time before I have a laptop computer on my nightstand or to take to the park or the beach with me.
We can look at this as the passing of an era. I look at it as the passing of an essential service that every reasonably sized community should have. While it is not the ultimate intent of the distributor, it is one step closer to censorship of minority opinions in our society. At the very least, it is one step closer to allowing only a few efficient but bland ideas dominate our culture. If only something can be done.
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