Is social media modern day’s society newspaper section? Experts draw contrasts, similarities

From 1911 through the 1960s, a society section was included in Spokane’s afternoon newspaper, The Spokane Daily Chronicle. These pages covered local events like club meetings and birthday parties. The comprehensive information provided about community events supported a healthy and strong community in Spokane.

When society pages were common, Spokane was a very socially driven city. Its countless different clubs and organizations brought people together into a tight-knit community.

Richard Sola, the director of the Spokane History Reading Group, said it wasn’t uncommon for a person to be a member of three to six clubs at a time.

“Clubs were a way of life,” he said. “It’s a well-oiled machine where people took the time to do it. Every day, there were gonna be multiple events with different clubs.”

Jim Kershner, The Spokesman-Review’s senior correspondent and historian, said there were seemingly endless types of clubs. From gardening to music to civic betterment, there was a club for everyone.

These clubs and their events were the main topics in the society pages. Since information on how to get involved in the community was easily accessible, more people were leading socially engaged lives.

“If you’re well-informed, it builds the social fabric of the community,” said Kershner.

However, the culture that was built around clubs eventually started to crumble. As the economy of the U.S. changed, and people were required to work more, very few people had enough time to participate in clubs. Since clubs were losing members, there were less events for the society section to cover, and it became today’s features pages, Kershner said.

For decades, there wasn’t anything close to a replacement for the society pages. Now, social media may serve a similar purpose.

“Instagram and Facebook serve a lot of the same function, only with gossip and stuff. That absolutely brought some of that back,” said Nicole Montgomery, a history professor at Spokane Falls Community College. “I think in a way, we’ve gone backwards societally.”

Social media may be similar to society pages, but it has its shortcomings.

Sola said social media isn’t building a community in the way society pages were.

“Social media tends to be targeted, whereas everybody that got the paper in the morning or with The Chronicle in the afternoon, got all the access to the information,” Sola said. “Social media tends to be, you get the information about what you are interested in versus what is happening in the depth and breadth of the community.”

Sola doesn’t think social media will be able to bring people together in the same way the society pages did. He compared social media to a collection of posters, only offering surface information and not including enough personal details to nurture a community.

“I don’t think social media can do it,” he said. “You can almost become more interactive with the newspaper … the information has a range and depth to it that you don’t have on social media.”