| Jonathan Randal, former Senior Foreign Correspondent for
The Washington Post, begins his presentation by speculating about why so many of his peers in the Harvard class of '55 chose to go for print journalism rather than join politics or other positions in public service. Mr. Randal speculates that the reason may have been that his peers thought of journalism as the "ultimate public service". Mr. Randal goes on to comment that the 50th reunion of the current graduating class is unlikely to produce as many journalists and he believes that this change is revelatory of the falling stature of journalism.
Mr. Randal believes that the decreasing newspaper readership doesn't bode well for the American democracy. Newspaper reading "seems to be receding with an ever accelerating intensity to the detriment to critical evaluation of issues that lie at the heart of democratic debate in policy making," according to Mr. Randal.
To further corroborate his point about declining newspaper readership, Mr. Randal talks about how on his return to Harvard as a fellow at the Kennedy School of Government after over 40 years of working as a foreign correspondent,
he was surprised to find that not many Harvard students were reading print editions of newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post. Mr. Randal narrates how the Harvard undergraduates said that they read the newspaper online. Mr. Randal feels that there is an "essential difference" between reading a paper edition and reading newspaper online, "In the process the old temptation was lost of allowing the eye to be seduced by an arresting photograph or an artful headline and thus despite oneself turning page after page and reading something seemingly of no immediate interest."
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