Archive for March, 2009

“My dreams are to have a house that has an attic… and a bedroom place and a kitchen with a living room… I would like for us to have a peaceful life… and plenty… of money… to survive… and we don’t get homeless ever again.”

- “Dylan,” in “Instead of a Home, a Motel Room”
Audio slide show feature
“As Jobs Vanish, Motel Rooms Become Home for Some”
retrieved March 11, 2009 from the New York Times

The sociologist Herbert Gans once wrote a book called “The Levittowners,” where he described middle America a great deal in terms of where they live.  Levittown is pretty much the classic stereotype of the American suburb; a single family in a house surrounded by flower-boxes, a lawn out front, porches, and white picket fences.  To Gans, the American middle class stands in stark contrast compared to their working-class origins; Gans challenged the convention of an apathetic middle class stooped in anomie.  Many of the beliefs and wisdoms of the American middle class not only come from family and friends, but also from media, work, and other social circles.  Today, Gans’ model of Levittown is what comes to mind when we say “middle class.”

Not anymore, it isn’t: that was 1967, and here we are in 2009.  Erik Eckholm of the New York Times ran a story about how families in Orange County, California have been seriously affected by the global economic crisis.  Quite a number of middle-class Americans, once represented by houses surrounded by white picket fences, are now living in motel rooms.  Foreclosures, debts, and hard times have caught up with the American middle class.

I’m not an American; if you view things from the outside, it seems that the life, times, and chronicles of the American noveau poor is nothing compared to homelessness here in the Philippines.  It’s not that they don’t have a problem compared to street-dwellers here, but it makes me kind of think a bit about the middle class.

Robinsons’ Galleria
6:27 PM

Today’s Inquirer editorial talks about the “last newspaper boom” in Asia, and it kind of gets me thinking – again – about a thought that has been brewing in my head for the past few months: the “death” of the newspaper.  In stream of thought form.

Is it the death of the newspaper and media institutions?  Have we entered the age of citizen journalism?  Is traditional media experiencing its last gasps?  Believe the hype if you will, but for everything wrong I said about traditional media, I’m not counting on its death just yet.

The idea is that media outfits like newspapers are businesses, and in a time of economic crisis, businesses flounder.  Newspaper vendors on sidewalks will tell you “matumal ang benta,” and newspapers are probably concerned about bloggers like myself “taking over” readers.  It seems that more and more people are turning to blogs for information, and very probably, traditional media views new media as a threat to its existence.  Rather than look at this as a clash of the titans and of the “victory” of blogging, I’d like to take a more detached view of the matter.

I don’t buy into the idea of the “death of newspapers.”  Newspapers will change, but they will not be crushed under the mighty heel of bloggers.  More than that, I do not think the proliferation of Web content is responsible for “killing” the newspaper, or that the blog is the “death knell” to traditional media.  The newspaper will not die; it will change, but it will not die.

Here’s why… hey, that rhymed.