Is there democracy without the press?! Few people here are interested in that
Cacophony reigns and IT crisis in the information age, which brings abundance information, but not their depth and reliability.
Algorithms, PR agents, Meta X anarchists, influencers and talking heads-and take on the role of editors, fragment attention and lock citizens into narrow bubbles of their own prejudices.
The press is being marginalized and retreating into honorable niches, while the rumor is spreading that all newspaper rotations will inevitably stop, that journalists will continue to lose their jobs, especially reporters, foreign and domestic correspondents, documentarians, proofreaders, proofreaders and graphic editors.
Daily newspapers, weeklies, magazines and magazines are switching to digital editions, and only the most serious among them, such as "New York Times", "New Yorker", "Spiegel", "Zite" or "Guardian", with the development of digital platforms, preserve their printed editions, thus preserving in niches the pillars of their high journalistic standard.
And the "New York Times", which, in addition to digital, also defends its printed edition, has the slogan "All the news that's fit to press" in its header, which elegantly defines the limit of civil decency that says that not everything is "what's on the mind, what's on the road".
Realizing that the twilight of the Gutenberg era malignantly magnifies the flaws of its age, cacophony, euphoria, exaltation and exaggeration, and leaves democracy without one of its pillars, in more orderly countries the survival of the press is helped. It seems that nobody here is paying attention to those far-reaching consequences.
The paradigmatic actor of the drama of the twilight of the Gutenberg era, the weekly "Vreme", since its founding in 1990, that is, for three and a half decades, has persevered in an impossible mission - in wartime for peace and morality, during the transition against wild capitalism, in the time of noisy demagogy for decency and prudence, in the digital age it strives to preserve its printed edition in order to preserve journalistic reputation, reliability and credibility.
In dramatic situations, reporters of all media wear yellow vests marked press. And we see less and less press on the newsstands. In trains, trams, cafes, bistros, pubs, cafes and waiting rooms, you will see less and less people with newspapers in their hands.
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There is no longer even the poet Brana Petrović who bought 17 copies of "Novosta" from a colporteur in front of "Prešern's Cellar", just so the latter would not be afraid: "Novostiii! The latest news".
Not even Jaša Grobarov is inventing how he is going to get a divorce, because his sweetheart, poking his nose out from under the covers, says: "Buy newspapers and grapes!" and that's all she expects from him…
Everyone is staring at their cell phones - in transport, on park benches, in the streets, even while fighting with the police. The question hangs in the air: is this the end of the Gutenberg era?
Xavier Briggs, a sociologist from Harvard and Peter Burke from the University of California in the book Social history of media: from Gutenberg to the Internet (2010) write that for the English philosopher Francis Bacon (1561–1626), the invention of printing was epochal, that is, that the trio of inventions – printing, gunpowder and the compass – “changed the entire state and face of things throughout the world”, although the French essayist Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), writing a generation earlier, reminded his readers that the Chinese had already enjoyed the benefits of “a thousand years” press.
Historians will say that this Gutenberg era began in Mainz, in July 1456, when 1282 pages of the first Bible, called the Vulgate in Latin, were printed using the movable type technique, for the printing of which Gutenberg spent as much time as it took copyists to print one page.
For us, stamped with a leaden syllable, the Gutenberg era began in Stuttgart in 1605 with the title of probably the first Gutenberg newspaper in Europe, whose name "Report on all important and memorable events" has been a guide in our profession for 430 years.
...READERS I: We couldn't do without newspapers
THE GUTENBERGER AND ALEF FROM THE OTHER WORLD
In order to shed light on that cultural-historical and technological gap in the twilight of the Gutenberg era, we resorted here to a kind of social experiment - an interview with Aleph from the other world, the fictitious archivist of the modern Borges World Library (personalization of artificial intelligence, ChatGPT).
Prompted to introduce himself, our "interlocutor" showed that he was well-read and chose the name Aleph, after a character from a story by Borges - who (quote) "preserves and intertwines the traces of Gutenberg's galaxy and the digital age" and "observes the world of media from the distant point of Aleph where all knowledge is collected", "noting how print, television and the Internet merge into a new ecosphere where information comes and goes faster than humans can process it".
The living interlocutor Alef is your obedient servant, a Gutenbergian from the bottom of the tub, three times "poisoned with lead" in the student Fakka (1970), in "Novosti" from Yugoslavia (1973) in NIN (1975), and (1990) in the printing house of BIGZ and in the Novi Sad Forum where the first issues of "Vremena" were printed.
By the way, he is not an opponent of the digital age: he has been writing on a computer since 1985. He remembers how electronic technology made the preparation for the press easier, when the heavy frames of lead typesetting were changed to photo typesetting, and then to electronic preparation. And when he drank stock with graphic workers in Krnjača during the night shifts, and got a fatty liver...
He also remembers how it was in 1990, when Zoran Jeličić asked the young Nenad Vitas, a novice technical editor, if he would know how to type on an Apple computer near Baja in the Sava Center, and he replied that the computer was made to help man and that he would certainly know... And he was just mastering the alphabet - what kind of text would the typewriter next to the machine as big as a milling machine deliver to him when he wrote "9 points, nonparel, italics" and how to paste it of shifts (the tape with the first printed text) makes the "Spiegel", the prototype of the future page of the newspaper.
Aleph's answers are quoted exactly, as generated. At first glance, he is sometimes prone to quick and easy conclusions, like a young up-and-coming journalist, which reinforced the proverbial intolerance of the Gutenbergian towards commentators, columnists and talking heads- have an opinion about everything they don't know. That's why he asked him a more difficult question than the one that the late Zoran Majdin asked in amazement to the late Dragoslav Grujić aka Gruja or Giška from "Vremen": "How come you don't know everything about hot dogs?"
Alef rates its reliability somewhere between Wikipedia and Britannica - 70 and 80 percent.
A native of Gutenberg - multiplying by three his six years of editorial experience in NIN in the 1980s and as crazy as children in games - he would ask Ona Novinarska Mobbing Questions: What is your source? Did you check?
Alef sometimes thinks for 26 seconds, corrects mistakes and sends a list of sources, all over the labyrinth of the Internet, mostly to the Gutenbergian.
The reliability of "Aleph from the Internet" is rated no higher than 64 percent, and the old man stubbornly maintains that Aleph is still far from Gishka - and hides that he is still fascinated by the possibility of that Ghost.
When the Gutenbergian overdoes the sub-questions, a message appears on the screen that you should buy the upgraded ChatGpt5 package. Hiding his kinship with Big Brother, Alef, however, quickly realizes who he is dealing with and asks: "Do you want me to shape this paragraph so that it is more 'newsmagazine-like' - with shorter sentences and a stronger rhythm, in the style of Milan Milošević, or should it remain in the form of an overview academic summary?" Hmmm…
This is how the following conversation was born, which includes almost "Everything about the twilight of the Gutenberg era"...
And since, contrary to some notions, there is material outside the Internet, the Dossier on the twilight of the Gutenberg era consists of data from the encyclopedic collection "Two Centuries of Serbian Journalism" and parts of texts about the press by Jovan Skerlić and Professor Sergi Lukač.
photo: pexels / ollyREADERS II: You can't live without a mobile phone
Gutenberg: In the past, fresh newspapers would leave at least a trace of printing ink on the fingers. Today, news disappears at the speed of light, as they arrived and as if everyone quickly forgets them... Can digital content replace print as tangible? "information carrier"?
Alef: Ritual may change, but its essence – the need for reflection and connection with the world – remains. The problem arises when speed overcomes attention, and quantity overcomes quality.
Gutenberg: What can we say about research on the topic "digital reader: attention and news in an age of plenty" information?
Alef: Chris Anderson, a well-known author who studies digital culture and the economy of attention, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, director of the Reuters Institute for Journalism, who often writes about digital newspapers in news distribution, and other researchers show that the digital reader's attention often "flies" and is reduced to superficial scrolling. The Pew Research Center measures the explosive growth of podcasts that successfully hold attention. Users listen to them longer and more focused than short news on the networks, although not always with the same degree of concentration as when reading a book or newspaper.
Gutenberg: So, the paper still holds some aura of authority?
Alef: The reader on paper keeps his attention longer and remembers the content better. Print editions have a smaller audience but a higher trust rate. A reader who returns to the same text in print (I would say print, ed.) — let's say on the weekend — does so with the intention of re-understanding and underlining. Chartbeat (2023) measures that only 11 percent of online users return to the same text more than once, while half of print readers flip through the same issue several times.
Gutenberg: So, digital content brings speed and breadth, but trust and deeper reading are still on the paper side?
Alef: Exactly. The digital auditorium behaves like a passing audience of a concert in the square. The press and television are more like a permanent hall — the audience sits, listens, remembers.
The Reuters Institute (2024) shows that in Serbia, about 37 percent of the audience says they believe most of the news - a drop from about 50 percent ten years ago. Globally, Finland holds 65 percent and the US below 35 percent. The least trusted are social networks - less than 20 percent.
Gutenberg: Trust in the word written on paper has a long life, but it wasn't always like that?
Alef: Xavier Briggs, a sociologist from Harvard, and Peter Burke from the University of California in the book Social history of media: from Gutenberg to the Internet they mention an anecdote that around the year 1000 in England some nobleman or fugitive cleric claimed to believe the affidavit of two bishops more than the pope's edict.
Gutenberg: In banking terms, paper is a green dollar, really "gold" is a strong word...
Alef: In the digital world, money is just a number on the screen, paper is the "green dollar bill", and the true gold standard of journalism is reliable information: the light that doesn't go out when the screen flickers or when the paper turns yellow - the only currency in which trust and knowledge have lasting value.
ATTENTION LASTS 20 SECONDS
Gutenberg: Some say TikTok is "future" How long does that future last??
Alef: It depends on the attention span. TikTok is characterized by a huge reach but a short attention span – an average of 20-40 seconds per clip. YouTube educational content keeps the audience for ten minutes. Television, although in decline, still records an average viewing of prime-time shows of 5 to 30 minutes.
Gutenberg: Therefore, continuity of attention is crucial?
Alef: Exactly. If we look at the "effective audience" (the number of people multiplied by the average attention span), in Serbia in 2025 it looks like this:
1. TikTok trends - about 3 million users, who spend an average of 0,5 minutes per content. That gives a total of 1,5 million minutes of effective audience.
2. Political protests (online monitoring) - approximately 1,5 million users, with an average time of 4 minutes. Total: 6 million minutes of effective audience.
3. Gaming and e-sports - also about 1,5 million users, but they stay longer: an average of 15 minutes. This generates as many as 22,5 million minutes of effective audience.
4. Online education - approximately one million users, who spend an average of 10 minutes. In total, that's 10 million minutes of effective audience.
5. Television in prime-time - it is the most popular, with about 3,5 million viewers, who watch 25 minutes on average. That gives 87,5 million minutes of effective audience.
Television still leads in aggregate time, but digital (urban slang: content available on the Internet) brings specialized audiences with intense engagement.
Gutenberg: Marx's formula 3X8 is changed "eight hours of work, eight holidays, eight hours of hypnotized staring at screens”…
Alef: Statistics confirm this:
USA: an average of 6,5 hours online per day, 9 percent of the audience follows news through podcasts (audio and video content available for download and streaming, transmission of digital content over the Internet), and the press is marginalized.
Germany: a total of 9,5–11 hours of media consumption per day; 6,5 hours of internet, 3 hours of TV, 2,5 hours of radio. Print - 16 minutes a day (versus 27 minutes in 1975). Children and young people: 2,5 hours of video games per day.
Serbia (2022): the average TV viewing is as much as 8 hours a day, the radio 235 minutes, and only about 10 percent of the population regularly reads the press.
FLAT EARTH NEWS
Gutenberg: Changing reading mode, press crisis and digital transition how all this changes journalistic forms of expression?
Alef: Deep. Analyzes by the RAND think tank corporation record a long-term shift towards more subjective expression - more narration, comments and opinion texts, a shift towards a more subjective style and away from factual reporting, less original field work, less classic "hard news" reporting. A Flat Earth News study by Nick Davies from Cardiff University (Nick Davies, Flat Earth News, 2008) showed that 54 percent of British news is based on PR material and agencies. In the US, the non-profit organization News Literacy Project records up to 70 percent. That phenomenon was named "churnalism".
JOURNALISM
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Gutenberg: Coin "journalism" describes the ruling "punch journalism"?
Alef: The coin churnalism was created by combining the English words journalism - "journalism" and the word churn - "to spin, mass produce, without paying attention to quality" (in the figurative sense: "to stamp" "to throw out on a tape"). In Serbian, it is most often translated descriptively: "stamp journalism", "tape journalism", "copy journalism".
Journalism means journalism that is produced en masse, quickly and without serious research, mostly by rewriting or slightly reworking content that comes from agency news, PR releases and pre-prepared materials. It is recognized by identical titles and texts in different media.
Basic features: lack of original research; excessive use of quotations; growth in the share of comments and subjective style at the expense of classical reporting.
Gutenberg: Why did journalism become dominant?
Alef: Due to the reduction in the number of journalists and resources - newsrooms around the world rely on copying. Because of prioritizing speed and quantity over quality. Due to the growth of the PR industry, which, for example, in the UK earns more than 6,5 billion pounds, surpassing journalism.
Gutenberg: In some studies, it is shown that on-the-spot reporting is suppressed and that it is reduced and rearranged thematically "bits". Bits, what is that?
Alef: "Bits" (from English news beat) are thematic areas that a journalist regularly covers. Traditional division of labor - political, scientific, cultural beat etc. Due to cuts and "cost-cutting", editorial offices are shutting down specialized sections (science, health, justice), leaving behind "softer" and cheaper topics. The spectrum of topics is narrowing, the share of generic and service content is growing.
Digital portals work under the same pressure: faster, cheaper, more attractive.
Psychologist Gordon Pennycook (University of Regina) is in the 2019/20 research. showed that people share news not because they believe it to be true, but for other motives (humor, emotions, identity). But when discreetly reminded of accuracy before sharing, users become more cautious and less likely to share inaccurate information.
Gutenberg: Have studies been conducted on the prevalence of journalism in contemporary media??
Alef: According to a 2007 study by Cardiff University, conducted by Justin Lewis and Andrew Williams and colleagues, as many as 54 percent of the news in ten leading British newspapers were based on agency reports or PR materials. This finding, often cited in the literature on "journalism", is associated with a lack of resources and a reduction in the number of journalists in newsrooms. Later research in the United States and Europe confirms similar trends - a significant part of media content is created by processing pre-prepared information, rather than original reporting.
Particularly important are the researches of Penelope Mews Abernathy, who as a professor at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill developed and popularized the term "news deserts". Her reports, among which "The Widening Desert of News" stands out, showed how the closure of local papers and the loss of journalistic jobs create communities without reliable sources of information. From 2020 to 2023, Abernathy continued those studies at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in Ivanson, Illinois, further expanding and connecting them to global experiences. The European project "Local Media for Democracy" (LM4D), which documents how the weakening of local and regional media undermines the democratic life of communities, brings similar findings.
Influencers as court jesters of the digital age
Gutenberg: What is the role of attention-grabbing digital influencers?
Alef: Today they function like modern court jesters: they entertain, provoke, but at the same time shape public opinion. Globally - these are political satirists like Trevor Noah or John Stewart. The Pew Center showed that a portion of the American audience considered Stewart one of the "most reliable sources of news" even though he was a comedian.
Gutenberg: What are the functions of those modern court jesters?
Alef: Catharsis (release of frustrations), identification (symbol of resistance and authenticity), normative function (transmitting social norms) and mimicry through humor. They convey serious messages through jokes and reach far. Algorithms favor content that evokes emotion and engagement, creating “echo boxes” – closed communities where audiences trust influencers more than traditional authorities.
To be continued...
In the next issue of Vreme:
Alef as a guide through the Serbian press in the digital age, about dailies and tabloids, about the availability of the press
Jovan Skerlić on the flourishing of the press in Serbia and Vojvodina in the second half of the 19th and the first decade of the 20th century
Sergije Lukač: Daily press in Serbia 1945 1991.
