I know I'm not exceptional in this regard, but in my heyday, I read two newspapers a day, cover to cover. I would read the Times at breakfast (once so intently that I failed to notice that the Jack in the Box I was at was being robbed) and then the Herald-Examiner at lunch. The Herald Examiner went out of existence about 15 years ago. I immediately stopped reading it when they stopped publishing it. See? I was right there on the cutting edge.
The Times... Circulation is shrinking. In this case, for two reasons. The internet has to be hurting all papers. Why pay money to sit and wait for a paper that went to press at midnight, and you're reading the stories seven or eight hours later, when you could spend that reading time on the internet, getting the absolute up to date story? That's one reason... The other reason is that Conservatives, with the internet available, could stop inflicting the Times Liberal bias on themselves, and still stay up to date on the news.
I called and stopped our subscription to the Times in mid-2004 when they ran a front page story about an Iowa farmer who had voted the Republican ticket since turning 18, but now was not going to vote for Bush in Nov. of 2004. Front page! Were there ever any stories about disaffected Democrats on the front page? On any page? Nope.
So I dropped them on account of Bias. I don't know what the excuse was for the other 30% of their readership.
So, to get to my point:l people want information. We want to know what happened. We don't mind opinions about the "why" of what happened. But they should be honest opinions, based on fact, not hope, or biased conjecture.
And in the age we live in now, newspapers and weekly publications, even when they try to be unbiased, are not the first sources we first think of.
I once subscribed to Time and to Sports Illustrated. Now why would I waste the time or the money for either? Many of us have favorite websites where we go, after we get the facts, to find out what the conjecture is about each set of facts. Very few of us are 'trend-setters,' but more and more of us are doing a lot more 'following' than we've ever done before.
So now if you're a reporter, or an editor, where would you want to work? Do journalism school students still think that the NY Times is the ultimate?
If "news" is a commodity, where do you want to be in the commodity cycle? Where it's mined? Where it's processed? Where it's delivered? Where it's recycled? If you're in it for the money, which part of the commodity cycle gives you the biggest bang for per unit of invested time or money?
How will the investigator-types fit into the system? Will they free-lance or will they hire out to the biggest, baddest vertical 'news' consortium? And the spin artists... Will news commodity organizations need them? Need to pay for them? They're going to be so many of them willing to work for free...
And news recycling... There is a market for that, you know. Just ask VH1.
Are we just too stubborn to give up on printed newspapers and magazine?
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9 comments:
But newspapers are so much better to wrap the coffee grounds and remains of fish in than the Internet is!
Don't you save the wrapping material all the things you buy on Ebay come in?
Newspapers make my hands dirty.
Probably, twenty or so years down the line, and if everything is humming along the Internet highway, there will be no need for paper papers. But until then, papers will have their ritual-lovers who like putting on slippers to get the bundle from the driveway, and who will, once retrieved, slip off the dirty rubber band (slip into pocket for another use later on). Next up is section sorting, which has taken years to hone; make just the right size pile, in the right order, coffee (or hot water) within easy reach, and maybe a half-sharp pencil on the side for a few crossword clues.
It'll seem so quaint, in the future, those dumb little things we do to get through a day today.
Treemonisha, can you look back at a 20 year younger yuu and think of any 'dumb little things' you did then that you don't do now?
I don't have premarital sex.
how about pre-martial sex?
You know I'm a pacifist.
I didn't know. From your perch near the Continental Divide, you could have just as easily been an atlanticist.
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