Kalan: Newspapers are information’s horse & buggy

A major shake-up in the newspaper business has been all over the media, which can only mean one thing: Not much else is going on this week. Otherwise, why bother telling us that media magnate Rupert Murdoch has purchased Dow Jones (which is apparently the company that publishes The Wall Street Journal and not a stout old man in suspenders, as I’d always assumed)? Many fear that Murdoch’s sensational style of journalism could destroy the credibility of the Journal, the premier source of news for the financial world and people who wish that photographs were never invented. But those media worrywarts are forgetting a very important fact: Nobody reads newspapers anymore.

It’s true that for many years, newspapers were the only way to get the news. But that was a different time, when people were less focused on up-to-the-minute information and more focused on not being eaten by dinosaurs. A printed paper filled with day-old stories worked just fine back then. Ever since the Ice Age, however, and the introduction of technologies such as television, the Internet and mental telepathy, newspaper sales have plummeted. As this very copy of Metro shows, the only way to get most people to read a newspaper is to literally force it into their hands. Even then they usually just flip to the brilliant Friday humor column, laugh uproariously and then throw the rest away.

I’ll admit something’s wrong with Murdoch’s purchase of The Wall Street Journal, but it has nothing to do with sensationalism. It’s that he’s now involved in one of history’s most shameful invasions of privacy. As I understand it, a journal is meant to be a secret place where Wall Street can record its most personal thoughts, feelings and fantasies. That anyone is reading Wall Street’s journal at all is rude. For them to distribute it for others to laugh at is simply outrageous.

In the end, Rupert Murdoch can’t destroy the American newspaper because there will always be a place for it in our society. Though obsolete as a medium for news, opinions, movie reviews, cartoons, crossword puzzles or classified advertisements, there’s still one thing it can do better than the Internet ever can: Wrap up fish. Quell your anxieties, newspapers. Unless Apple comes out with some sort of computerized iWrap fish containment system — which would be pretty awesome — I think you’re going to be all right.

Elliott Kalan is a producer for “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” He co-hosts the online comedy show “Fist City.”