On Saturday, Jan. 9, 1847, the first edition of The California Star was published by Samuel Brannan with Elbert P. Jones as editor. The California Star was San Francisco’s first-ever newspaper — a way for readers to know about what was happening in the other parts of the country. The more America expanded the more difficult it became to know what was happening on the other side of the country at the time.
Closer to the 1900s, the technology behind newspaper production had developed in efficiency and had become more capable of printing complex designs and fonts, which attracted more readers. Simultaneously the population size of some of the big cities had grown exponentially, the San Francisco population had grown from around 25 to 30 thousand people to nearly 700,000 people with the gold rush of 1849. This led to more foot traffic throughout the city which made it easy to sell newspapers on the street for as little as one cent.
Print newspapers provided the ability for media conglomerates to be able to target certain papers to certain areas and demographics. This was an advantage because not all cities, groups, and communities have the same interests and opinions across various topics. Now, in today’s world of online media, it is difficult to target things so specifically like that, though the development of certain social media algorithms such as that used by TikTok in some ways serves as the modern equivalent.
In the last 30 years, print media has faced a significant decline with the advancement of technology. According to The New York Times, their first online publication was Monday, Jan. 22, 1996. This created a new way for readers to understand what was happening in the world around them. Many newspapers around that time became available online to readers across the country and the world. The SF Gate launched in 1994 and is one of the first large newspapers to be exclusively online, never having been a print paper.
There is a common modern narrative that Gen Z has an extremely low attention span. Statistics show that with the rise of technology, the attention span of Gen Z is only eight seconds — around that of a goldfish. Studies have also shown that having an article that is physically in one’s hand can leave a better impression than when reading something online. When scrolling on a social media platform many people are not going to remember what they just saw or read only a few minutes prior. This helps explain why, though reading on a computer or phone might be easier, is not the most effective way to learn about important current events.
Many Bay Area newspapers such as The SF Gate have either been from the start or have become completely online newspapers, some more of these include Berkeleyside and The Berkeley Scanner. Many newspapers have become digitized because of the difficulties of finding the funds to have a printable newspaper.
Newspapers need the money to be able to print but also advertise and somehow pay their staff for their work. Though it may be a declining form of media, there is still a lot of value in print newspapers, and they have held a crucial role in educating people across the country for many generations.