I get my daily dose of slashdot, wired, news.com as well as world news on the net, but I'll always need the feel of a crisp newspaper... even if it's just for when I go on the can.
When you buy a newspaper you know that you will not be getting a totally unbiased view of the news - each paper has its political standpoints, views and biases.
Web based news allows quick and easy correlation, and that means you can easily see more sides to the story. A great example of this is www.newsnow.co.uk which is great to get a themed view of the world.
Yes newspapers will survive, but I think sites such as NewsNow allow you to see how different factions report the same news.
It means "before the flood" referring to the Noah's Ark bit. "Anti-diluvian" would be to be against or the opposite of diluvian... which word I do not know.
When television came out, didn't forward-thinking people predict the death of radio? -- "But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
I used to read 7 or 8 daily newspapers. Now I read only one and get the rest of my news information online.
The one poster was correct though -- the advantage of the newspaper is that I can read it over lunch. But if I could get a Palm-like appliance with very cheap access costs for the net, then I'd ditch the physical newspaper altogether.
In the long run, the newspaper business is almost certainly going to migrate completely to the net.
Newspapers tend to not have anything newsworthy in them. Natural disasters, plane crashes, murders and police corruption make the bulk of my local rag. We do have a local paper [valleyadvocate.com] that has a fantastic arts listing that is not mirrored in the online version (I cannot find local arts listings on Slashdot, and I am not invited to your hip parties Jon...). I also am always in the market for a new motorcycle... the Want Advertiser [wantadvertiser.com] does not publish the phone numbers of listings for sale in the online listing. You need to go buy the hard copy (or take a notebook and pen with you to the newsstand) to get them.
"This column was inspired by an e-mail from a newspaper editor, asking me if I knew what might make the people who read Slashdot want to read daily papers. I said I didn't know, but that I would ask."
So, here lies the commercialization of Slashdot. We are marketing guinea pigs now?
I would hate to see newspapers goto an all online medium. The primry reason is I enjoy getting away from the damn computer. I spend 10 hours a day coding and as much and to the dismay of some the overly connected people out there, I do not want to spend more time in front of it than I have to. I enjoy sitting at my table with a cup of coffee and reading the sports section. I enjoy being able to take the crossword with me wherever I go an solve it, all you need is a pen or pencil. No "hint" buttons or keyboards. As much as I love technology, especially computers, there is a point where it becomes too much.
Not everyone stays connected to the web 24/7, Katz. I didn't know the results of the primary till I woke up this morning, because when I go home from work, I enjoy spending my free time doin g some things non-net related.. playing hockey, going out with friends, eating, games, etc. And no, I'm not some 50 year old guy, I'm a 21 year old sysadmin, and I'm sure there are -plenty- of people who either a) don't access the web or b) don't access the web away from work.
Plus, it makes the metro ride way less boring in the morning.
I love my Palm Pilot and AvantGo. I would be severely bored and probably risk falling asleep in some meetings and all of my classes if it were not for my ability to read the news during them. I love it - all the greatest tech and financial and political news, all contained in this little toy that I drop into my cradle a few times a day. But, there is a downside. Lets say I read this great article on TopicX and want to to show it to one of my roommates. Oh darn, I did a hotsync before I could show him and now the story is pretty much gone unless I want to spend way too much time digging around on the real web site for it (its usually a pain). The only other gripe that I have with most of the news that I get over the net/my palm pilot is that it has no relevancy to my local city/life. Granted I like reading about AMD's new chip or the Microsoft trial (no flaming or any dumb comments about Microsoft please, its just an example) or whats going on in other big cities. But thats all I hear about. I need to be able to pick up a local newspaper every once in awhile, or else (like this week) I'm wondering why the hell any of my friends on another side of town are without phones (turns out they are replacing a trunk - never caught that one on Wired). I think there is still a definite market for newspapers. Plus, it just doesn't seem the same reading my Palm Pilot over coffee in the morning somedays.
I take public transportation to work/school and I like the feeling of print in my hands.
Unfortunately, the only papers here in Portland, OR are: The Oregonian (elitist corporate rubbish), the Willamette Week (elitist corporate rubbish masquerading as elitist proletarian rubbish), and various ultrasensationalist political rags like The Alliance and Socialist Worker.
These big news conglomerates need to start investing some serious time and money into Xerox PARC, and the folks at MIT working on digital paper/ink. This stuff could be less than five years away from being feasible, and will help any news organization (paper-, or web-based) that can successfully make the transition. If they don't start looking at solutions like this, and online subscriptions soon, there won't be much left in five or ten years, at the rate we're going.
For me one of the most important issues is the relative qualities of viewing content on paper (reflected light) against content on screen (emitted light source).
I find paper based material a lot easier to read, and I have a suspicion that it is something to do with this reflection vs emission of light: my eyes get tired a lot quicker looking at screens. Are any slashdot readers aware of any research into this area? love to have some references / URLs.
Also of course I think there is the issue of quality of type on paper versus pixels on screens, the area that can be shown on one printed page/screen without needing to access a navigation device (like mouse or scrollbar or turning the page); and the sheer tactile pleasure of paper (though not always with cheap printing;-) )
I get the local paper (which sucks, but I like the comics and Dave Barry) along with a community newspaper. The reason for this is it lets me see things that I might not normally.
Large, national papers can only get maybe to a regional level of what's going on, and I can get that online (Yahoo, CNN, etc). Regional/local newspapers have more specific news (traffic pattern changes, news of the local buidling inspector taking bribes, etc), which is usually news you don't even get on the radio or local TV, since it is so local.
When I set up Yahoo for news, I have it set to the news that I want to see. However, that's not necessarily the news that interests me. Newspapers let me open the page, scan headlines, read the first few lines of an article to get context, and read it if I'm interested. I can do this on an entire page in just a few seconds. Doing the same amount of looking online can take a minute or two (load page, scroll past ads, read line, realize I don't like it, back, scroll to next article, click, load page, etc). Now multiply this times 50-60 pages, and you can see that newspapers give you the best overall view of news.
Here's my prediction: The Big Guys (NY Times, USA Today, etc.) all go online and give up the dead tree business. The strictly regional/community papers survive.
People are still willing to pay money for information as long as its printed on a bit of paper. The only way the internet is competing is by being free. This means that newspapers still get a lot more money, and can afford to pay the best writers even with a much lower circulation.
Of course the demand for newspapers will fall, but there will still be a demand until someone works out a way to make some real money from a news site.
Print media exists so business owners can put photos of their stuff all over the place. "Hey see this great stuff? Come buy this great stuff." When you advertise on the web, the content only exists for moments but when you print it-it's permanent. Remember styrofoam McDonald's boxes? Well, they're still here under the golf course just waiting to advertise the golden arches to the Morlocks.
Newspapers really have to stick with the niche they've been in since TV news took over the bleeding edge. Newspapers still fit nicely in the area where they can give more detail and less glitz than the evening new (which still generally sucks), but more concisely than the weekly magazines.
It's an important area of coverage that too many papers have been ignoring as they try harder to compete with either Newsweek or CNN. Local and regional news has inherent value that just won't get covered by any other source.
On the web front, if newspapers choose to expand into real-time internet coverage, they are indeed competing directly with the CNNs of the world, and without the massive resources of the national media outlets. But here again, newspapers can give breaking news on the web that would not be worthy of interrupting Oprah for for a broadcast update.
i say newspapers can do perfectly well serving their communities, which is really their original and best purpose. They just need to focus on what those communities are in the cyber age.
Right now I'm too preoccupied with school to care much about the news, but when I do want to get the dirt on whatever fresh hell the world is producing today, I sure as hell don't want to spend 20 minutes reading it on a CRT. I spend too much time staring into the new "glass teat" as it is, sometimes it's nice to just have hard copy. I know this has already been said, but I reiterate: until computers aren't so physically taxing to read from, papers, magazines and books will have a place.
Oh ya, try reading Slashdot while cuddled in bed with your sweetie at 10:00 on a Sunday morning:-)
I'm a programmer, I sit in front of a computer screen all day. I get the news I can't get otherwise (like/.) from the net, but for generic news a newspaper, which doesn't involve sitting in front of a screen, is much better.
Until we get _much_ better digital paper, I don't want to give up my newspaper.
I still read newspapers on a very occasional basis. Usually they are completely unreliable for reporting facts or are reporting news that is irrelevant to me. When I do buy a newspaper, it is usually for the movie listings or some such and has nothing to do with the content of the paper although I will often read the content once I have the paper.
There is far too much privacy invasion reporting and fact twisting in the print media so I do not generally read it. I don't generally watch TV news for the same reason. On a very occasional basis I will buy a paper because it has a story on something of local interest that hasn't been reported elsewhere or to get a different perspective on said local item. However, I do not read the paper to get facts; I read the paper to try and discover what the real facts are by comparing several ostensibly independent sources.
In the current age of news channels being on top of the latest news and internet sites posting news five minutes after it happens, there is no need to put international news on the front page of news papers. Put local interest stuff on the front page.
Also, include more "good" news instead of the human suffering pieces that seem so common. I, for one, am sick of reading how the system failed Johnny or how some freak hurt Sue. Give me something about how a good samaritan was there to stop some freak from hurting Joanne. Give me news about scientific (or other) breakthroughs. Forget about hyping the crime that is going on.
Most of all, do NOT sacrifice facts for a sensational story. Do NOT invade privacy of anybody for a sensational story. Do NOT intentionally emphasize one fact over another to mislead the reader while not exactly telling a lie. (The same goes for non-print media.)
The first reason I stopped getting the newspaper had to do with that last bit. Paper. As little time as I have to slog through the whole thing, and as selective as I am in what interests me within, it seemed like a massive waste of resources to pile up these mounds of paper. With daily delivery, that's a lot of paper and it seems like a massive waste (don't even get me started about phone books). As with any format that changes or updates frequently, like phone books or newspapers, electronic format is less wasteful and easier to keep current.
Second, is the whole content matter. I don't care about sports, but that's a major part of the paper. I also don't care about gardens or home decorating, but they have sections in the sunday paper. It is a complete waste for me to buy this and for them to print it for me. Further, it is a pain to dig through the paper looking for the information I want, discarding the chaff I could care less about. Again, an electronic format lets me define my preferences and lets the provider track my reading habits to better tailor presentation to me, as an individual.
Honestly, I don't see any reason to go back to newspapers and I doubt they could come up with changes that would adequately address my concerns. I think that they'd be better off adapting to the times than trying to hold onto the current form of their industry.
Newspapers are like the old people in my stuffy retirement-age neighborhood...and come to think of it, that's who reads them.
I'm not a newspaper reader, and the newspaper in my area is pretty 'fancy' (The Detroit News / Free Press). I read things I get something out of, and I haven't seen a newspaper yet that I could learn something from. The news is outdated, often biased, and generally uninformative (newspapers generally have two article types: "This Happened" or "Be Afraid of This"). The writing is barely seventh-grade, and often so shoddy that I get fed up mentally correcting gross grammatical errors, such as commas, spelling, and sentence structure. (If you're a grammar fanatic, though, try attacking a newspaper with a red pen--very satisfying!)
In short, they're ugly to look at, preachy, badly written, and WAY too often, innacurate. The fact is, that's not just outdated media, that's BAD media. New or old. But still...I would certainly pick up a newspaper in the future, if one landed on my doorstep that I felt I could actually learn something from (other than as a grammatical exercise). But again, Mr. Katz is right--I don't recall having EVER seen a newspaper even make an effort to better itself. They're a retirement-community commodity, and as those people die off, most likely, so will the newpaper.
They don't tell us things we don't know. They don't offer us good writing or strong opinion.
i just have to say that this is pretty much the most hypocritical statement i've ever seen come out of anyone's mouth. who doesn't tell us things we don't know? who couldn't write his (ahem) way out of a paper bag (or, say, a college writing class)? if we can define "strong" to mean "researched" or "well-argued", i think i have you on a third count (though this is hardly fair).
of course newspapers tell us things we don't know. how else are we supposed to discover these things? from tv? not likely. tv news is awful.
what's the difference if the newspaper delivers its content to me on newsprint or on a web page? the new york times is the new york times.
and, by the way, if we're going to criticize people for printing things we already know, i think we ought to start at home. for instance, the previous story [slashdot.org] announces a service that has been around for _years_. of course, i think we're all pretty much familiar with this particular aspect of slashdot.
I won't read papers for two reasons. First, they are not searchable. (I sometimes get annoyed at books for the same reason.) Second, they are messy; I hate getting cheap ink all over my hands.
I still read a newspaper every day, and I don't plan to stop. Partially because it makes my commute seem shorter (and if you ride the LIRR, you know how valuable *that* is), but mostly because Newsday [newsday.com] is still my best source for entertaining and informative stories about my beloved Mets. ESPN.com and CNNSI.com don't come close to the local flavor sports fans need. Yeah, Newsday sucks for technology, and they're only OK for news (which, as Katz said, I already read on line the day before), but there's nothing better for my daily baseball fix.
The primary reason I no longer read my local paper more than once a week or so is that the writing is terrible, subliterate even. It's like reading poorly edited essays written by eighth-graders in remedial English. Worse, only rarely does one find useful, independent analysis of the news; just a regurgitation of unhelpful, timid facts. It's not the only reason, tho:
The vast majority of the stories come straight off either the AP or NYT syndicated feed;
The ratio of annoying human interest stories to insightful news analysis is depressingly high;
Almost everything in the paper sounds exactly like what one hears on the TV (and that with me trying not to watch TV!);
The New York Times is available on the web.
In fact, the only paper I ever read much anymore is the Times. Most Sundays I manage to dig up a copy (if I wake up early enough), and it provides reading material for the week. The Week In Review section and the Magazine are each worth the $3 that the whole paper costs, and I end up with reading material for the week.
I'm waiting for the day my newspaper is electronically delivered to me with the content I choose. To be frank, newspapers take up too much space. Too much wasted paper that ends up piling in a corner of my house because I don't feel like taking the time to sift through all the innane stories. I'd like to be able to sign up for a newspaper ask for specific types of news and receive a nice email every morning with all the content I asked for and nothing else.... (well, ok.. the ads too *grumble*)... newspapers aren't dead... it's just the paper part that is going to die. Well, and maybe all the fluff that comes with news today too.... I would just love to say "and I don't want a single story containing Monica Lewinski"...
On the tech side, the thing I like about newspapers and, by extension, magazines and books, is that they are technology agnostic. A century from now you'll still be able to read that newspaper (assuming the acid in the paper hasn't eaten it away). Can you say the same for that 8-track tape, 8-inch floppy, cassette tape, CD-ROM, etc.?
On the content side, it depends. My local newspaper (The Kansas City Star) is pathetic. It is filled with fluff and crud and no real news. It is so community-oriented as to be worthless as a source of information about the world. It has almost become a news catalog instead of a news source. Newspapers need to return to real, substance-oriented news and journalism. I prefer newspapers like the NY Times, the Washington Post (on its good days), The Wall Street Journal, or the superb British newspapers like *The* Times.
The same is true of magazines. Newsweek, Time, and even US News and World Report are jokes, content-wise compared to, say, The Economist. (It is interesting to me that the papers and magazines which focus on economics are the good ones with a lot of substance.)
Oops. I've rambled a bit.:)
One final thought (not intended as flame bait): While I enjoy sites like Slashdot, I don't consider them the online equivalent of newspapers or a source of journalism. What Slashdot is to me is a "news catalog" where I can find interesting stories _done elsewhere_. To me, if Slashdot was truly a news site it would be creating its own stories and not just presenting interesting links.
Newspapers are a complete waste of time. The quality of reporting is absolutely abysmal. They couldn't report a fact accurately if their lives depended upon it.
It is impossibal to be unbiased, but we want unbiased. NPR for instance is credited of having great news, but listen closely and you realise they are baised for big goverment - they tend to cut off those advocating cuts as soon as they can without sounding like cutting them off. One person I know puts it this way: He reads the Syndny (Austrila) paper, the London (UK) paper, and the New York Paper (US). He would read more if he could read more languages. Each paper has a bias, and this way he can at least cancel them out. Get togather with Those papers, and agree that each will put togather one section of "important issues" from their area. That secion will be run included as is in each paper, and must be made only of stories included in their paper. The goal is to get their bias exactly as they have it. Anti-US if that is what their bias is on the news. Don't let them write specail watered down stories for you, get the meat of the matter and include it in it's entirity.
Learn to seperate news for human interest. The Kennidy plane crash of last summer comes to mind. This nobody, who had never done anything made the front page, and was considered a great tragity above the dealth of a friend of mine. When you look at it, neither one had done anything news worthy, but one had parents who did do newsworthy things. (BTW, don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing him for not being newsworthy, that is his choice - there is nothing wrong with making it and I respect him for making that choice. But the fact remains he wasn't news worthy) Likewise we have the Diana/Mother Theresa deaths, one which outweighed the other. In fact both were human interest and neither were news. For that matter in the US a obsolete royality of anouther country is not news whatsoever. (Except that it would be in the london section if you took my advice of the last paragraph. )
Speaking of Mother Theresa, hsa anyone really examined the critics of her? I was brought up being told continuiosly that she was a saint despite religious differences. Latter I found some critcism in less trust worthy places that I can't quite discount because it adds up. REport those stories. News is not always nice to read, and your job is to present that side, even if unpopular. Assuming of course that it is true.
Try making the comic interesting. Calvin and Hobbes won't come back, but find other commited ARTISTs who can draw something interesting. Yes this is fun, but all work and no play makes jonny a dul boy as it were. There must be come artists out there with talent that you can give half a page a week to. (Note I said half a page a week. If a creative person can't create enough for something every day give them once a week. Your columists don't all write every day. My favoirte columnists appears only on wednesday and sunday.)
Remember filler isn't everything. If you have enough ads for 50 pages, but only enough news for 20 pages under the normal forumla then raise the ad prices until you get the same income from 20 pages of well researched news and the rest of the advertisers decide to go elsewhere.
It is impossibal to be unbiased. Ideally every story would be jointly written by two people with explictily different biases. Send a rebublican and a democrat to the Democratic national convention and give each half the space. (If you have the sapce send a socalist, libratarian too, but evetially you can't afford to pay that many reporters and you miss the little important things because each wants to cover the same big thing)
When the newspapers become relavant I'll read them, but the fact is most days what appears on the front page is filler. Maybe it is the biggest news story of the day, but it isn't really important.
I still read a newspaper. Although they have drifted away from their greatest assets. Newspapers still have more skilled reporters who have an ability to provide comparisons between different events and hopefully write about any and all of them with an above average intelligibility. Reporters seldom are on the spot when things suddenly happen, but they almost always get there and pretty quickly at that. They are trained to coalesce the different information sources into one coherent train and write interesting but concise descriptions of that train. I don't see newspapers going away (although maybe using less paper.) Unfortunately, most newspapers nowdays believe it is their right to inject their opinion as well. With the average reporter far to the left of the average reader this creates a dissonance which newspapers are doing nothing to dispel. The media has certainly made the Republican race for the nomination a race and the Democratic one not a race. Until they return to their strength and their moral obligation of fairness, newspapers can adapt all they want, they won't regain circulation.
Slashdot has probably never experienced a visit from a politician.
Newspaper editorial boards, their publishers, and the media conglomerates are variously spun, pressured (i.e. your merger will go through quicker if you don't look under that rock) threatened, and bribed all the time, every day, by every government agency and interest group in existence.
It would be very hard to silence Slashdot: No union controls the presses, no regulators control the Internet feed, at least not nearly as directly as they do broadcast licenses. Despite the fact that Slashdot has a near monopoly stranglehold on Linux news and commentary, the DoJ has not yet formed an antitrust theory under which they could prosecute Slashdot.
The ad sales structure is also very different on the Internet. It is harder to put pressure on a Web site through advertizers, which can more-easily be replaced.
Not to mention all the usual things like getting wire stories directly, better investigative journalism from Antiwar.com, Newsmax.com, NandoTimes, etc. Except for a small and getting-smaller elite set of writers worth reading, the newspapers have no advantages, all the costs, and all the disadvantages.
Which all adds up to: old media is toast. There is no fix. It is as unstoppable as cars replacing horses. Have a nice day.
When I need to know who is playing at the local clubs, I read the newspaper. When I want to read a column by our local troublemaker, I read the newspaper. When I want to know who to vote for, I read the newspaper, and then go OPPOSITE what they endorse.
I also read the newspaper to get an EXCEPTIONALLY biased slant on what is going on in the world, and to find out who has died recently.
Cant forget the funny papers either!
I usually find myself reading the article, then going online to find out the actual truth about what is happening.. (you should see the spin that the library flap in Holland MI is getting here.. "horrible people want your children to see porn at the library! Filters are GOOD things! " etc.. not one mention of any of the things I find online about the fallacies, or the agenda of the "sainted" AFA.. (dont sniff that flower Mighty Mouse.. thats OBVIOUSLY a cocaine reference..)
So yeah, I read papers.. its whether or not I believe them that is in question, and in most cases, I dont.
I recently got a free subscription to Computer Shopper. I remember CS as an ~11x14, 1000 page behemoth, consisting mostly of ads. Now it's about 20% its former size.
After a moment's reflection, it seems obvious why CS is on such a spectacular decline. Its target audience is people in the market for computer equipment, a niche that websites, augmented by search engines, fills dramatically better.
News, unfortunately for newspapers, is another niche where the net has tremendous advantages over traditional print media. And, of course, the list goes on and on.
Newspapers are doomed to drop to at least a shadow of their former scale and influence. My advice to newspaper owners and editors: bail out while you can still salvage some of your investment in money and experience. Don't wait until the market is flooded with ex-newspeople and the money is gone.
You could try writing articles targeted at people with a reading age greater than 10. Better yet, you could hire reporters with a reading age greater than 10.
Some other ideas:
1 - Try printing a few articles that you didn't just crib from Reuters or AP newswires.
2 - Stop printing IT sections that deal with anything but the business end of IT. Unless you hire actual IT professionals to write the IT sections of your papers, you will always look like fumbling idiots. (by IT professionals I mean people who have worked for at least 5 years in the industry)
3 - Provide a means for us to add over one hundred whiny, irrelevant comments to the end of your articles. If you want to increase your readership, you must enable your readers to get first post.
4 - Include the word linux in all your printed material, particularly in every headline. IPO after a year or two and nobody on NASDAQ will care that your readership is zero.
5 - Provide some worthwhile news. Try and scoop everyone, just like you used to, back in the day. Woodward and Bernstein didn't hear about Watergate from the AP newswire, now did they? Make your reporters go out and find stories.
newspapers contain unnecessary and demeaning articles such as puff pieces about Leonardo DiCaprio. Thank goodness one will not find those in the electronic media.
Although Jon Katz probably doesn't seem to realize it, MOST of us don't live in big cities like LA, New York, or San Fransisco. We live in places like Santa Maria, CA, where local websites are a joke. Am I seriously supposed to look for a used car, an apartment, or look up local news on a website? Yeah right! I'd be surprised if Santa Maria residents know what the web IS, much less how to put important information up on there.
Also, newspapers are a great filtering method. If I wanted to check up, say, the international news for the day, I'd be inundated with a flood of information. Yeah, CNN.com and other places do a great job, but newspapers provide an alternate source from a viewpoint that has at least a few hours to think about the story before posting it, and they know that it'll be almost 24 hours till anyone reads the story, so they don't jump to conclusions the same way TV news or web news often does.
And then of course there's the simple fact that it's much easier to lounge around the living room couch with a newspaper and breakfast than it is to do so with a computer.
Newspapers may change their format (Daily to weekly, more local news, etc), but they aren't going away anytime soon.
I did not renew my newpaper subscription after it became clear that I get the same news every day, and a day earlier, on the online versions of CNN [cnn.com], the Washington Post [washingtonpost.com], and the Spiegel [spiegel.de]. Frankly, I'd like these businesses to survive, at least online, and I worry about their ability to continue when people like me no longer buy the paper editions. But I just can't get around the fact that the Internet versions are free and are significantly more timely.
I do buy the paper in situations where I can't get to the Internet, like when I ride the train to work in the morning, and I still enjoy it. Longer, more in-depth reports can make a paper more worthwhile than a collection of articles on the Net.
It's sometimes claimed that books will become obsolete, but I'm sure they won't, because paper probably will always be a much better medium for delivering information than a computer screen with its damnable scroll bar. You can't scribble notes in the margin on your screen; you can't jam your thumb and index finger into two places you want to save; you can't fold it up and stick in your pocket and take it with you to the john. But newspapers will always have the great weakness of being a day behind.
Newspapers may have to become more like magazines to survive -- they'll need to publish longer, more researched articles with more depth than the daily news. These pieces will need more time to develop, hence requiring a weekly or monthly publication schedule rather than daily. But then, weekly and monthly magazines are already there, so the daily paper may really be on its way out.
We mustn't forget, however, that very many people still have no Internet access, and it will last a few years before the Internet is as universal as, say, television. That might keep the papers alive for a while.
I don't think Jon has gotten the right reasons for the decline of newspapers. In our home the reason is simple - time.
Both me and my wife work full time. There just isn't enough time in the day to futz around with a newspaper - the signal to noise ratio is just too high. It takes too much time to take in a daily paper (let alone the Sunday) when there is all the shopping, cooking, cleaning, and hobbying to attend to.
Small snippets of news inbetween TV shows, on-line stuff for me (even in a high-tech job there are always 1/2 minutes while I'm waiting for downloads or compiles or tests to finish etc.) snagged here and there, and that's it. We get our news already pre-digested 'cause that's all we have time for. It sucks, but that's life.
Oh, yeah. Jon forgot environmental conservation. Most people nowadays (especially the young) are a lot more concious of what they throw away. And a foot-high stack of newspapers every other week is not very appealing. Jeez, you could get together with a few neighbors, stack them all up together, and actually SEE the tree they cut down to make the paper.
No more newspapers for us - though we get at least a call a week trying to get us to subscribe.
How can they change that? Maybe focusing on local news more, local geography and businesses (new restaurants, real comparasons - ie "if you like *this* restaurant's food, you are sure to like *that* one too", where to find stuff so that the shopping part of our lives is easier - not coupons as it just takes more time), classifieds on a commission basis rather than an ad rate - so that people don't have to put money up front to sell something. Oh, and how about newspaper collection as well as delivery. Just leave your old papers out and they get collected when the new ones arrive. Make sure they are recycled and use them again.
I still read papers now and again, not so much for the news but for reviews and editorials and The NY Times Book Review section. When I do, a few things occur to me:
1. Most web sites are incredibly juvenile in comparison. 2. There seems to be a glaring lack of knowledge and experience on many review-oriented web sites. 3. There's an odd tendency on the web for people to latch onto weird marketing-driven causes--Athlon, GeForce, MacOS--and act like developments related to these products are newsworthy. In a newspaper, an article like "Buick to Revamp Interiors of 200 Lineup" would be obviosly a phony advertorial type of article. But on the web those topics are legitimized into real news.
First off, I think Jon Katz is commiting his classic blunder of confusing developments in technology with a "revolution".
I read the New York Times every morning, and I find it packed with good writing, informed debate, and outstanding design. I found it completely hilarious that Katz suggested that papers have somehow missed out on the "Graphic Revolution", when nine out of ten websites are virtually unusable because of all the f**ing graphics which the designers pack in there. Memo to world: Pretty Graphics != Good Design.
Newspapers as news organizations seem pretty vital to American discourse right now. Possibly the actual way they deliver the news will change, but, frankly, computer display technology is going to have to get a lot better for that to happen. Even the most interesting things on the web are hard for me to read at any length, because of the massive eye strain. And I, for one, have not moved my computer monitor onto my breakfast table just yet.
But even that is only a small part of the story. Newspaper organizations do an extraordinarily complex job: collecting news, writing it up, editing it, filtering it, etc. They may do that well or poorly, but that job will still have to be done. As much as I love Slashdot, and as much as I talk to everyone I know about it being a new way for news to be distributed and commented on (and even sometimes created), I am very clear on the fact that Slashdot thrives because it exists in the midst of a landscape which is filled with "traditional" news outlets. It's the fact that Slashdot can refer readers to the "full story" elsewhere which makes the whole enterprise work.
Possibly, it would be interesting to consider some of these questions in terms of what people are looking to get from the news. For example, people want to know What Has Happened. Who won a primary? What price did Microsoft close at? What was the score in that baseball game last night? Television and the internet are excellent at answering these questions. However, people also want to understand the ramifications of those events in more depth: What does this mean for the next primary? What is the status of the Microsoft court case? How is the season going for the Red Sox overall? Currently, newspapers are my (and I suspect, many people's) preferred means of getting this sort of analysis of events as they happen. From a broader view, people want to step back and see these events in context of a longer story: What is it like being on the campaign trail? What is the history of Microsoft's monopolistic behavior? Will the Red Sox ever break The Curse? Magazines seem to answer these questions well.
Growing up in central Wisconsin, all I had access to was the Stevens Point Journal. I'd say that over 80% of articles were all pulled off the AP wire, but there was the obligatory local section which talked about high school football scores, and who won the local Ice Show. For communities that are not as expansive as Minneapolis/St. Paul (to use a local example) and do not generate enough local news, that's what newspapers are reduced to... local print versions of national stories. Yet at the same time, these are the communities that are slightly behind the whole internet revolution as well. I feel you can replace newspapers right now with a little work. Heck, I even got my parents back home finding what they wanted to see via various websites rather than being dependent upon print versions.:) So until VCRs and TVs are fully web-enabled, I can't see how newspapers, in their present forms, will go away. They're just too convenient, too portable, and after 8 hours of staring at a 21" monitor at work, a nice change of pace.
I'm in a weird position here: I'm the internet reporter for the Times of London - one of the oldest papers in the world - so I can sort of see what Katz is ranting on about here: I think he's very wrong on a few counts, though.
In recent years, newspapers have remained graphically impaired. They seem oblivious to the graphic revolution that has swept magazines and is spreading through the Web. Papers continue to cover new media technologies and popular culture poorly, alienating young and future audiences. They have ceded good writing to magazines, publishing and websites.
Graphics: pictures, you may have heard, are worth a thousand words. Not so in the newspaper world. It takes a whole department of graphics people all day to build a graphic. a few minutes to write some words. How do you file a graphic from a warzone? besides - do you really want news in simple pictures? what are you? stupid? read the words...there's more info there. new tech and culture: not true. it's just that news editors are very picky as to what stories are newsworthy to the general reader: that means it must be relevent to the greatest number of people. Sad for slashdot readers to realise, but new tech - the cutting edge geeky stuff that we all like - is mostly utterly irrelevant to most people. It's true...who - and think honestly - really cares about most of the stuff posted here apart from those of us who come here? Popular culture is the same. It has to be truly popular - not just what Katz likes.
Papers seem seem almost stupefyingly oblivious to the fact that they aren't in the breaking news business anymore. Fifteen to 24 hours after CNN and innumerable websites reported that George W.Bush would soundly thump John McCain in South Carolina, most newspapers reported the news on page one the next morning as if none of their readers had heard it before, despite the fact that almost all of them had.
A good point, but a little overstated. The headline news may have possibly hit you from lots of sources - tv, radio, web - but a) how many people just get the paper and b) the real value is from the other stuff - the analysis, the op-ed, the other stories that CNN (who, imho, are possibly the worst, most parochial, most self serving news organ I've ever seen in a free country) failed to bother with. The wider picture: International news, for example.
As the Net and Web spawn ferocious and idiosyncratic commentary, democratizing opinion all over the country, newspapers cling to stuffy and elitist op-ed pages, where opinion is generally confined to a "left" and "right" and voice usually given to elite claques of pundits, academics, authors and CEO's.
They're there BECAUSE they're elite. If I want to hear the opinion of the man-in-the-street, I'll go to the pub. If I want to hear what someone with influence, experience, and knowledge thinks, I'll read a paper. Why is this bad?
Newspapers are also struggling to define evolving definitions of culture, leisure time, recreation and amusement. Opera, classical music, hard cover books, art museums are one kind of culture. But there are new kinds - elaborate and creative gaming and video cultures, creative coding, the booming business of Web architecture and design, proliferating weblogs (hives of individual opinion and expression), vast messaging systems and services like AIM and ICQ, collaborative global information-and-software sharing movements like Linux.
all true - but then again, it would still be true if written by the lead writer of Pig Farmers Weekly. How is creative coding more newsworthy than, say, creative chicken plucking. Sorry guys - everyone thinks their profession is madly important. Truth is, everyone is equally right, and equally wrong. And for most people, a semen stained dress, or the shenanigins of some starlet are more important and just plain more interesting than the social phenom of Linux. Newspapers are for general readers. Their content must be of interest to all.
I read TONS of news daily. I've been a news hound ever since the 4th Grade (thanks, Mrs. Briggs!). That was ~1982. Anyway, I try to read at least one paper per day, if time permits. I read the WSJ now, mostly because of my Marketing course for Biz school. I love the NYT. Stamford Advocate. USA Today. Whatever. I used to read 3 papers, minimum, per day in college. As big as the net is getting, there's nothing like holding that paper in your hands, feeling nice and calm sitting AWAY from the computer, and flipping the pages. = )
People said newspapers were going to cease to exist when radio came along. They were wrong. People said they were going to disappear with the advent of TV news. They were wrong. Now their demise is caused by the internet? Gee I think I've spotted a trend here...
The problem is this, newspapers are really cheap compared to the amount of content in them. TV and radio news are reduced to sound bites. Bandwidth and screen size have dictated similar constraints on the internet. Newspapers have no length constraints as such, so they can have more in-depth content. In theory they also could put the time into crafting well-balanced stories too, but for some reason they don't bother. In theory, they also can carry better local news, although my local TV stations do a good job of that too.
Newspapers also have an air of permamence about them and some people like that. The internet is changable, as is TV and radio, but paper is not.
Besides, when all is said and done, what am I going to light my fireplace with if I didn't have newpaper...
First, I'll point out my newspaper using habits for the few newspaper executives that may be reading. I pick up a newspaper about once a year at best. Usually it is just to find movie listings.
Many of the points made in the original post are valid for the media industry as a whole. The newspaper industry is merely a subset of what is going on. Emphasis on surface over substance, sensasionalism over rationalism has been invading the media for quite some time. Newspapers are only suffering because they are saying the same thing the TV and Internet media are saying - only 24 to 48 hours behind.
For the newsprint media to really distiguish itself, it should stop following the trend of dumbing down media with flashy graphics and sensational stories. I stopped reading the newspaper when the stories began insulting my intelligence.
I agree that the newsprint media has a virtual monopoly on local events. However, it is a monopoly that they rarely exercise. This is due, in part, to big conglomerate media organizations that own news presses across the country (Gannett owns the paper here in Des Moines, IA). These large corporations beam in their stories via satellite to their various holdings each day where they are regurgitated onto print. A good local paper should be 99% local news and only 1% National/International.
It would be interesting to see how much print space is devoted to the Holland, Michigan debate on installing censorware in the libraries [slashdot.org] versus how much print is used up covering the Presidential hopefuls in their local paper. I doubt the censorship issue gets even gets 1/3rd the coverage. However, if the article linked above were printed in the local paper in Holland, MI, I'm sure it would spark new arguments in the debate.
I'm looking through the articles posted before me, and they seem to boil down to two arguments for newspapers (community news and readability mechanics) and several arguments against (timliness, expense, and I'll throw in my own "environmentally unfriendly"). I think that the readability mechanics problem will be solved sooner than many people think, and at that point we'll probably be looking at subscription-based electronic information services of some kind to provide commmunity news and events.
An even bigger problem is that the "more educated" part of the newspaper-reading demographic is getting tired of reading things at the 2nd grade reading level that the average newspaper is written to. As a result, while newspapers tend to provide information on issues, it's at such a low level that there isn't enough information on some topics and too much condescencion(sp) on the other topics. And it's a lot harder for me to click a link in my newspaper to get somewhere for more information (heh).
For example, when the local media covered the DDOS attacks last week, they glossed over a lot of things that I found interesting and wanted to know more about. On the other hand, they were very careful to make sure that I knew what the Internet is a group of computer networks.
Before the rise of Internet news services like the sites provided by CNN, ABCNews, and (gasp) MSNBC, I didn't have much choice on where I got my news unless I wanted to spend a couple hours at a library reading papers from around the world. Now I can get summarized news and dig in to what I'm interested in to the level I'm interested in spending time on it, without relying on some editor at a newspaper with different priorities than mine.
Face it: newspapers are written to speak to the lowest common denominator in our society. We (we meaning "Slashdot readers") tend to be a much better educated group, and I for one don't have the patience to put up with a newspaper that's talking to me like I was 6 years old.
I will buy newspapers when a) I can receive the information daily on a handheld device via radio waves...with option to print.
b) the reporting is a bit more responsible. Stop misquoting people and check your references before you run the story.
c) I am able to influence what stories have follow-ups. I don't know how many times I've read the paper, found something interesting, and then "poof" it became non-news the next day.
d) the quality of writing improves. Stop gearing the articles to people with a 6th-grade reading ability.
Those are the only things keeping me from subscribing to a newspaper. Albeit, I still pick one up occasionally (once every 2 or 3 months) for the crossword, for the movie listings, or just to see if things have gotten any better since last I checked.
The statements are in descending order of importance.
If I want maximally timely information with the most superficial possible coverage, news portals are the ideal medium. If I'm willing to wait a bit for slightly more analytical treatment, newspapers seem to fill the gap (I'm including electronic newspapers here -- I think the delivery medium is clearly a red herring). If I want the most analytical possible coverage, I will wait for someone to have pondered deeply enough about the subject to have written a book, journal article, or some other extended treatment, which can take weeks, months, or years.
So based on this, do newspapers have a future? If by newspapers we mean media that come out in discrete "editions" as opposed to continuously, then the question boils down to whether or not they provide some value for their more drawn out time scale. My impression is that most newspapers do not take adequate advantage of their comparatively leisurely time scale. Or, rather, most continuous news sources are able, by manpower or whatever other means, to provide coverage that is as good as most newspapers. There are exceptions (I like the NYT), but I can't see any purpose for newspapers that ask us to trade timeliness for no particular advantage.
I think this applies equally well to local news, even though most localities are as of the moment still best served by newspapers.
To put it simply, a newspaper is a lot more portable at the moment. I know some folks out there may think and do otherwise, but I will not carry a laptop into the restroom/reading room. A newspaper, however, is perfect. [I don't even want to hear how some of you have installed screens in the wall and wireless keyboards and mouses attached to the john! A phone in the bathroom is too much for me.]
Plus, I still have yet to find a suitable online replacement for the Sunday newspaper. I like being able to jump around in the newspaper a lot easier then I can on the newspapers web page. Plus, the battery won't die on the newspaper when reading it on a plane.
Yeah, newspapers are slowly dying. I'm sure the newspaper subscription of the future will be some kind of PDA style device that continually updates during the day and folds out to newspaper size. until that happens, a good ole newspaper is still easier to deal with.
I read the Wall Street Journal every day (or at least as much of it as I have time for). The news, except for the little tidbits on the second column of the front page, aren't intended to be breaking news. They're intended to be an in-depth exploration of events affecting the business world. Not all of it is interesting to me, but it doesn't have to be.
The Wall Street Journal generally offers a quality of writing not generally found on the net, and I appreciate that. It's especially obvious to me on a daily basis, as my local paper is the Harrisburg Patriot, widely regarded as the WORST paper for a state capitol in the nation. Imagine U.S.A. Today, but much worse.
The WSJ has been around for a long time, but they fill a very different role than the average local paper. To a lesser degree, so do papers like the New York Times and the Washington Post. If anything, the local papers will go the way of the dodo in favor of the web (I know I get all my breaking news from AP/Reuters feeds).
The reason that newspapers originally existed for was to quickly spread news. Radio took that role, and newspapers began to focus on more depth coverage to the news.
Unfortunately, in the new niche one needs to be trustworthy. Whenever I have been at a news event and later read the coverage in a newspaper, I have not recognized the event. This includes not only campus political demonstrations, but also more mundane events.
Now I realize that a newspaper needs to be sufficiently entertaining that folk will read it, but this really doesn't necessitate fictionalizing , and thus trivializing, the news event being covered. This requires good writing style. One doesn't need to turn every event into a tragedy or a musical comedy.
However, my experiences with the candor and honesty of newspaper articles cause me to read with humor when someone excorates Slashdot for being inaccurate.
...well, that's one paper I'll always be reading. most of my news sites, that aren't computer specific are the websites of some of the newspapers that put a good show on the web. NYTimes being one of them. im away from home, going to school in a small town with a horrid rag i can't stand. i read my local paper (upstate NY) and the NYtimes everyday on the web. when i fly back, i'll be rushing to a news stand to get a solid copy.
i enjoy the sections of the paper that aren't neccessarily "breaking news" - arts and leisure, lifestyles... either just to peek at what the rest is doing or to get out. sometimes it's nice to be able take the paper, a coffee and sit in the sun and read someone else's experience or opinion and be enlightened by another viewpoint... the viewpoints (yes, a gross generalization, but it's true sometimes) on the web, at least where i frequent usually, are often tech-centric... sometimes "old school wisdom" needs to be absorbed - and that, right now, is mostly going to happen through "old school" mediums.
Newspapers are not on their way out. They are merely going through a slow period before they figure out how to harness the Internet to deliver news instantly.
The newspaper of the future will be an 8.5" x 11" sheet of flexible plastic that has an LCD-like display and an embedded processor and wireless connection. It will periodically download information from the Internet, either wirelessly on its own or wirelessly from your basement home server. The user will be able to choose how frequent the updates are and the content that they should contain.
Graphics capability can be modest. A little better than a DSTN Passive Matrix display should be enough. You should be able fold it up and carry it or throw it away, so durability will not be an issue. The key to this is maintaining a near constant, wireless high-speed connection. So Al Gore better quit fooling around with this presidential crap and go lay in some new DSL lines.
I stopped reading newspapers a while ago, there isn't really any news in them, just a load of crap that the capitalist entertainment complex wants you to read. People who think the media is liberal are just idiots; the entertainment media is controversial for sure, but it's all for profit. Now that these media corps are consolidating into vast vertical monopolies, it will only get worse.
How can anyone look at the media circus surrounding JFK jr's death, or the current political campaigns, and possibly take the news media seriously? What a joke. The net isn't any better (it is perhaps worse), but at least there are mailing lists and so forth where one can get the press wires that don't generally make it into the mainstream.
A few weeks ago there was a revolution in Ecuador, massive labor strikes in India, but none of this was really in the news. I guess the little cuban kid was more important.
Full disclosure: my wife is a reporter. Now that that's said, I think there is a need for journalists who don't feel the pressure to "get the news now." If all journalists just press the camera or microphone in the face of their sources and say, "You gotta say something 'cause I'm live here!!" we'll never get the subtleties that come from really conversing with sources, or sources that don't want to be revealed. There is a lot of art in good reporting, whether it's on the web or on paper.
In regard to paper, Sunday mornings wouldn't be the same without the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal Weekend section and a pot of coffee. I think there is a lot to be said for sharing a physical paper with family members, and even reading a story together. My wife and I sat on the couch to read the full Ken Starr report together. It was great fun! Sure, someday you'll just spread out your folding display panel, but until then I do enjoy using dead trees once in a while.
That's all the newspapers need to know. They need to stop cowtowing to corporate sponsors, they need to quit toeing the line for the government. They need to go out, INVESTIGATE, and report. Newspapers will NEVER be able to update as fast as other info sources can, so they need to specialize in reporting the meat and reporting it right the first time. Find out about the corrupt lockheed engineer that took 2 million in bribes from the chinese to screw up the mars lander, etc... etc... That's what we want. We want to know what REALLY happened in Somalia when those 'Peace Keepers' were in there. We want pictures, we want info. If we can't get it from a newspaper we'll get it from the 'net. The 'net has the advantage of a blazing fast response time, so the newspapers will have to overcome that by providing more QUALITY. I don't give a shit which celebrity got caught speeding last week. Tell me who just discovered what 3 identified genes do and how to control them!!
The way I see it, in an extremely simple way, people fall into these categories:
1. People who do not have "reasonable" access to online news sources. 2. People who do, and reads both traditional paper and online news sources. 3. People who only reads news from online news resources.
In #1, reasonable means the person has decent Internet access and is savvy enough to know where to get good, reliable and broad range of news. This is usually not difficult.
I think most people on Slashdot may fall in #2, leaning or moving toward #3. (Well, for me this is the case).
The appeal of information on the Internet for us is the same as the appeal of paper for those who do not sit in front of the computer 10+ hours a day. It's accessible. We who read online have the added advantage of being able to check several sources constantly, be able to filter by preference, and more importantly, we can have some kind of community feedback mechanism.
The newspaper is still a great medium to deliver information en masse. That's why we demand so much of it. Because it is spreading to so many different people. Online, the potential audience is huge. With newspapers, the actual audience is very large.
So would old style newspapers cease to exist? Not very soon. Will people read more stuff online? Absolutely.
But news online needs to be different from the traditional paper-based news simply because it is a different culture, a different audience. There needs to be real efforts to make good information and content available online, rather than just copy from the paper medium. Creators of said content must also see the potential for interactivity by the online community and leverage it. It's not like I'm saying anything new here, Slashdot happens to fall into this category. But the quality of the online only sources have not been as good as the traditional paper based ones. They are not as rigorous about the journalistic standards the traditional newspapers have (or should have) adhere to. Credibility is important.
Sheesh, I wish I wasn't doing other things when writing this. It might have come out a little more coherent.
I long ago gave up on the local daily paper (the Sun [sunspot.net] ) not just because it's been surplanted by the Web and CNN but because it sucks. The lack of competition among local papers (Baltimore had three dailies when I was a kid) allowed quality to slide. While I'll pick one up if it's lying around, I haven't bought a copy in two or three years - I even forgot to pick one up when they had a big photo of me and an interview in their "Plugged In" section. (This was about the OLGA/Harry Fox Agency copyright battle. [olga.net])
However, I find the local "alternative" weekly City Paper [citypaper.com] to be useful; local news, event calendars, etcetera. Unlike the daily, it's not full of sections I have no interest in (sports, travel, "society", and the like). And when I'm done reading, the dogs get to pee on it.
The future? I'd like to see customizable newpapers. Assuming better quality than today's dreck, I might subscribe if I could say "Send me the comics, world news headlines, local news, and don't bother burying me in dead trees for the rest - I don't give a damn who won the football game and I get my tech news from/. so don't bother with you wimpy little PC column. Oh, and something above an eighth grade reading level, please."
I like being able to carry a newspaper to the Caribou Cafe down the road on Sunday mornings and reading while I have my breakfast. I have a subscription to the AJC here in atlanta for the weekend papers. Newsprint still has portability. Sure, as wireless bandwidth gets more widespread and cheaper and as laptops get lighter and more portable, you will see people reading print mediums less and less but I want to curl up with a good BOOK or a good NEWSPAPER in bed at night. Not a laptop...I can already feel my eyesight going bad from staring at a computer screen all day long and then spending a couple of hours an evening catching up on personal business online. I need the break.
And as a side note that may disgust some and make others nod in agreement, It's easier to read a paper on the can than to find a good place to position a laptop. Sad part is, I do my best work in the "office".
The Boston Globe actually does a fairly good job of covering technology issues. Hiawatha Bray and Simson Garfinkel do write columns about important technology issues, even if I don't always agree with them.
The whole issue of "timeliness" is overblown. So what if I don't find out that Bush beat McCain in South Carolina for a few more hours? Most of those hours I was asleep, anyhow. Likewise for the "graphically impaired" issue. Why do I need all that eye candy, anyhow?
There are a few things that newspapers do really well that won't happen digitally any time soon, if ever:
1) They're convenient to read over breakfast, or in bed on Sunday morning.
2) They're conveniently organized. Now, you're saying "WHAT!!!???" Yup, they're conveniently organized. The world/national/major local news is in the first section, the local stuff is in the second section, and so forth. No, it's not organized by subject or anything. That's just right. I get to see more than just headlines; if something catches my eye, I'll read it.
I don't know how many equivalent pixels a newspaper page is; I'd guesstimate 30Kx50K or thereabouts for a single broadsheet page. That's so much more visible information than I can fit on my screen that it's laughable. Plus, the screen forces me to be in a certain place.
Like it or not, the "information revolution" is still a relatively small part of life. Eating, sleeping, having shelter and transportation, are still more important to our lives than what happens on the net. The majority of people still don't own computers. The same vapidity that permeates popular culture permeates cyberspace.
In my spare time I do hack. I do other things, too, and I need to do them more. I could use more exercise, which I've lost a lot of time on in the past few months due to a project (a print driver I'm working on). I haven't played my viola in a year, and I could use doing more of that. I've been on the net for upwards of 15 years (I'm a spry old 36). Yes, it's nice that due to the net there are people working on this print driver in Japan, Germany, and elsewhere in the US, but it's not my whole world either.
Software patents, DeCSS, and such are important (just ask my wife how angry I was when the injunctions were granted), but they really aren't the whole of everything. People aren't dying over them. Yes, it is important that sanity prevail here, and the current state of things isn't very sane, but big corporations have always been trying to take over everything and this is just the latest; we have to be just as vigilant as always. And we could use a little perspective beyond our little online world.
Don't get me wrong -- the net does bring important benefits. I've done a lot of research on various ailments and such that various members of my family have, and it's a lot easier to do than it would be in a traditional library, as one example. It can add a lot to life, if it's looked at as something more rather than a replacement for anything. But on the whole I think we're too wrapped up in our geek culture around here, and could use a little more getting out into the world of matter rather than just the world of information.
I stopped reading news papers about 6 years ago. The main reason is that they insult me. The same thing goes for local and national news casts. I find it extremely infuriating when some reporter or an "anchor person" summarizes what a politician or some other person was saying.... I am intelligent enough to understand the original speaker, I do not need someone to summarize it for me. Also, the picking and choosing of quotes infuriates me. Of course, that is related to the second reason why I do not read news papers... they are too concerned with sensationalism.
Now, I realize that flashy headlines sell papers and get people's attention but the line between the tabliod press and the "serious" press has just about disappeared. The local news paper here in Memphis, "The Commercial Appeal" [gomemphis.com] is very bad about printing articles that are one-sided or appear to be one-sided. They are extermely bad about taking quotes out of context and reporting only the information that they think will make the most sensational story... not the most informative story. Furthermore, they rarely finish a story. They only report the initial "sensational" parts of the story but never follow up with "the rest of the story" For example, they might report on a crime that occurred and someone getting arrested. They will never follow up with a story on whether the person was found guilty and if so, what the punisment was.
I also do not think that the majority of people writing for the popular press is qualified to write about technical topics. You have all seen examples when they have misrepresented facts or have reported information that is flat out wrong- simply because they did not understand what they were writing about.
I do not live in a news void, however. I get the majority of the news that I am interested in from the Internet... the fabulous thing about the internet is (as you all know) that you can get information on a particular topic from many many different sources and come to your own conclusions... not to the conclusions of some reporter. As far as local news, I listen to the headlines on the radio and that's about it. If there is something that catches my attention, I will try to find out more about it.
What can be done to get me to read a news paper... get rid of the sensationalism, start reporting COMPLETE stories. Stop "dumbing down" the information and stop taking quotes out of context. Also, put the whole paper online.
I dunno - there's a lot of papers experimenting w/ 'new media' like our local rag [pilotonine.com] which is also parterned w/ a local ISP.
They used to say freedom of the press applies only to those who own one - altho you have to have subscribers, delivery and circulation.
They used to be call the 'penny dredfuls':)
Personally, I get most news, wx, sports and software updates from the ol' 28.8 modem - the weekend paper has been on the verge of being canceled for some time - it helps to fill the recycle bin so I get a few bucks off garbage pickup - but about all I read is Dave Berry and the comics Sunday morning to break from the monitor, and maybe the headlines if there's a tornado in town or Gates buys into the local shipyard - just did a 'google' search and didn't find any obvious articles about that but Gates is now tied for largest stockholder of Newport News Shipyard. (local news)
In "Genome," Matt Ridley writes about the staggering implications of the Human Genome Project. You will hardly ever see these issues on the front pages of newspapers, or anywhere inside.
Well, if you are talking about "Sunday express" or "Bild" you're right, since you hardly find anything interesting in these newspapers. You won't find any information about Transmeta, either. But talking about the Humane Genome Project, I think the most concise source of information on this topic would be "Nature" and "Science", and a couple of specialized magazines. There you'll find what you mention and more -- even on the cover.
I have a full electronic access to most of the journals I need for my work. I have them as a hard copy also downstairs, in the institute library. And though most of the scientific articles I find while surfing, and read after printing them out, the general "news and views" sections I read holding an old-fashioned magazine in my hand. Why? Because it is more convenient than a computer screen.
And getting to newspapers, even though I got most of the headlines from the Web/news/email, I read "Der Spiegel" every Monday. I read it on the bus (I have to travel about 40 minutes to get to the Institute).
I can imagine a device which could replace a newspapers and some of the books for me. I has an US-letter format, is very flat, with a cover over a high-resulution LCD. It is very light, so you can conveniently read it while in the bus, sitting on the toilet or lying in your bed. It does not cause the nausic impression before my eyes like the computer screen do. It does not break after I throw it at the bed side before going to sleep. I can take a pen and draw on the margins. It is water resistent, or at least it doesn't give you a nasty shock if you drop it into the bath tub.
Oh, and I forgot. It costs me $30. For each 6 months:)
There is only one place to find the funnies, and that is in a newspaper. so why oh why do they print them so small and so crammed together? Take Bill Waterson's (creator of Calvin & hobbes) advice, and let the authors draw as big as they want. To see a good example, buy a copy of the Boston Sunday Globe. Many of the comics are blown up to fill an entire half-page.
I recently was surveyed with a followup survey by the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88). This survey tracked several thousand (~40,000 at the start, ~25,000 as of the last followup) from high-school to present.
One of the questions in there was "How many days, on average, would you say you spend reading magazines, newspapers or other periodicals?" I had to as if online news websites counted. Without them, the answer would be 0, with them the answer is more like 6 or 7. The interviewer commented that they needed up update their survey. :-)
I find no reason to go back to paper news sources. They're too slow, too broad, and mostly pointless. I mainly browse over a newspaper if I'm stuck in line at Starbucks, and there I don't usually get past the headlines.
In the local newspaper I can see all my high school classmates and the crimes they've committed and the strange people they've married. I have yet to find all (or any for that matter) of the local municipality's websites and see the blotter online. That information is what makes me laugh during my morning coffee/tea/breakfast.
There are certain things I read online and others that I go straight to the daily paper to read. They both have their place.
Funny that I should say that, since I never liked that push frenzy on the WWW some time ago... Maybe it's because in the case of newspapers, the push is a lot more gentle.
My newspaper informs me about lots of things that I would not know how to find on the web (and search engines are not a solution for news). It's the kind of stuff that I wouldn't actively go looking for, but will read if my eye catches it in the paper. Some of that can be very interesting and make me go look for more on the net, but it wouldn't happen this often without a newspaper.
In a way, this is similar to Usenet. Usenet will also feed me with stuff that I did not actively go looking for but that might still be interesting. That's also why I still use it. With newspapers the "effective push scope" is even broader that on a Usenet group dedicated to some (set of) topic(s), so I expect I will stop reading Usenet sooner that my newspaper.
An other reason to have newspapers is that computers still are too heavy and clumsy to cary about wherever a newspaper can go. Also, connecting to the net costs money. Newspapers also cost, but comparing the amount of verified information per buck that I get from my paper with the the amount of unverified stuff that I get from the web, the newspaper is cheaper. A lot cheaper actually, if I consider that on the web I'd need to spend a lot of time and money searching for the same amount of news first.
And last be not least: newspapers do not crash while I'm in the middle of an article. Netscape does that all the time on me.
OK, newspapers are now suffering from a more level playing field in the media business, as are television stations and radio. As are software companies for that matter - now, at least, if a software monopoly (ahem) does such a bad job that people can write something better on their spare time, because of the internet, they are finally in danger.
Are you interested in knowing how you can compete with on-line news enterprises? A lot of this goes for TV and radio, too.
You know what I hate about newspapers? This is an election year, right? You know what would be useful to me? If someone itemized the participants in the race, and their claims, and declared positions on things, and then cross-checked that with their backgrounds, their voting records if applicable, campaign finances, former business partners, and so forth. I don't mean that glib, drop-in-the-bucket narrative you guys print now. I want charts. I want tables. Then print that every Sunday. Keep it up to date! Now, if a dozen of you did it, and you all competed in doing that - who'se more accurate, more impartial, who'se got more dirt... and so forth, then I'd race to the corner shop and buy several papers just to keep up.
I don't just idly want that information, I need it!
Newspapers have always made this claim that they're the guardians of democracy. Well, guardianship is relative, guys. Relatively speaking, compared to your (collectively) slipshod, partisan, "we're insiders and you're not" approach to informing the public about politics, there are half a dozen websites better than the best newspaper for election coverage.
This exposes a bigger issue. You guys focus group to death. Who are you, President Clinton wannabees? Do not write to the lowest common denominator! Write to a higher standard and let the public rise to it! The Lewinsky debacle couldn't have happened had the press not abbetted the sensationalism. As though journalists and editors live in a world where people are shocked by adultery? Not only does nobody care in their own lives, they assume the rich and powerful engage in it. Do you think we weren't all sick to death about hearing about Elian Gonzales within the first 48 hours? There are millions of homeless children, children with dead parents, custody battles... But someone, somewhere, assumes that we'll care about that one. Stupid.
But most of all - just cover the politics. Cover it like you're getting paid to do it. We don't want quips or anecdotes. Veiled party politics. Republican papers and democratic papers. We want to hear it every week like every candidate is a stranger to us. Most of them are!
Aren't you all sick of hearing about how 90% of Americans, when stopped on the street, don't know the first thing about John McCain, or his platform? Or Bill Bradley? Well, guess who'se fault it is, guys. There they are, the numbers screaming out at you that no one knows this stuff. That's the information people - society! - desperately needs - deliver it to our doorstep!
For a little consideration, a little less smug patronizing, and, if nothing else, thorough, systematic coverage of the election, I would gladly pay multiples of your subscription price.
I used to read the Chicago Tribune everyday. I stopped recently when my husband hurt his back and could no longer go out and get the paper. I had intended to start the subscription up again, but i don't miss it as much as i thought i would.
One of the most frustrating things i had to deal with was they kept screwing with my favorite comlumn, Miss Manners. It was supposed to be in every Sunday and Thursday. Then they switched to every Wednesday and Thursday. Many, many times the appropriate section would declare that Miss Manners was running that day and it was not there. They tended to drop it in order to run ads. I called and complained, but they still did it and acted like I was out of line for asking about it!
It was also frustrating that the deliveries were fairly often late or the paper was wet. When I stopped the paper, I found that I rather liked not having the little nuisances gone from my life. I read comics online, I read news online, now available from sources as reliable as the printed paper, and all I really miss is the local ads.
and that is rare. I don't see why I should read print when I can surf news channels on TV and read online sites like CNN, MSNBC and/.
Obviously I am not involved with my local community to any great extent, but even if I want to know what events are happening locally, my first resource is the Web. There are several local-news oriented websites and local tv and radio stations have web sites too. It is just more convenient than messing with dead trees.
The only thing that newspapers have going for them at this point is the portable factor. They require no outside power source, can be taken anywhere, and are great for starting fires.
I don't read newspapers. I used to, when I was in a situation without 'Net access, but now that I'm connected most of the time, I never feel the need. The only content that's useful is the local stuff. I am not nearly as impressed with the writing quality as some other posters seem to be, maybe that only applies to a couple of papers. I also don't appreciate the constant tele-marketing, but I guess that's a personal thing.
As far as local content goes, its easy to see why the 'Net, so far, has failed in this arena. Until most (60+%) of the news-loving folks in your town have broadband, it's not gonna happen. When they do, a/. style news source will become possible, and I honestly believe this is a superior form of news trolling (trolls = funny pages, IYWC)
/. only works as a news source because it has achieved a critical mass of posters. It works because of the huge number of eyeballs and the massive effort that can be aggregated with each person giving their $.02. I think this is a great style of news dissemination, sure some of it's innacurate, but that *always* gets pointed out by someone. You have to use sig/noise filters, but they work automagically after a while. If you can figure out how to make / work for a local news site, you can go ahead and quit your day job.
To me, newspapers are just souvenirs. If something that I think is special happens, I'll buy a newspaper and store it away in my drawers or attic somewhere. Often I won't even bother reading past the front page. I'll have probably read the story a dozen times from a bunch of different sources already.
Even our local newspaper has a website [thisisglou...hire.co.uk] now. I just don't see the point in newspapers as news. Even the classifieds are online. Newspapers are ornaments.
Newspapers are like any original physical media- software, films, albums, whatever- I only buy the originals when I want to celebrate ownership of an original item. For instance, if there's some commercial software I really like (Paint Shop Pro [jasc.com] springs to mind), I'll buy the original as an ornament on my shelf (usually I actually install the warez version anyway). I buy original CDs of bands I really, really like, but tend to listen to the MP3s. I'll buy videos of films that really move me (Aliens, Bladerunner etc), even though I might prefer a different foreign/censored/director's cut that I've taped from somebody else.
And then there is the media which is mediocre, which is okay for a while, which does a job that doesn't need repeating. The stuff I wouldn't endorse if I were a celebrity, but hey, it fills a need, until something better comes along. One hit wonder bands. This morning's news on another dull day. Some software which crashes a lot or isn't really as flexible as I want it to be. An okay film that my wife might want to watch later. These are destined to spend their lifetime in my collection of MP3s, websites, warez and VHS tapes.
How to sell more newspapers? See Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age".
what would it take to get./ readers to read a paper pulp product: how about, if it had a little box on the front that I can type in a few search terms and have it present articles with them in it?
But seriously, there are real advantages to computerized media that a printed product just can't compete with, no matter what you print or how you lay it out - that is the ability to search (something a computer is MUCH better at than an eyeball skimming over an index or the classifieds) and to customize what you see and what you don't. The ability to control what gets shoved in your face and what gets relegated to the back pages is a powerful, addictive drug that once your hooked you won't ever go back, by personal choice. Like Yahoo. Papers have always championed diversity and now they've got it and a single run just isn't going to meet the needs of everyone, or else the content just gets thinner and thinner from trying to appeal to a lowest common denominator.
The answer to get people to want to read your paper? Put it online - naturally the local 7832 printers unions isn't going to like it a bit but they can be retrained as McSE's to run the server farm you'll need to meed the demand and think of the advantages - lower printing costs - if your make a big mistake ("Dewey Wins!") you can easily change it dynamically and have everyone just hit 'reload' instead of having to print retractions in the next paper. And most importantly to the business, advertisers will now only have prominant positions at the head or side of columns, but paid links to their own sites for those wishing to find out more about their product.
For a time when the poorer folks will need a paper edition, but for many that even need a paper edition they'll have 'paper on demand' - that is find an article you want, hit 'print' and it prints out on a disposable pulp w/ soy ink or something and they can take it out on the porch for close scrutiny over coffee and scones or whatever.
I'm surprised how many/. readers obviously still read print media. I guess I'm one of the older/. regulars, but I no longer do - I haven't bought a newspaper or a magazine for over a year.
Why?
Partly because they're ill-informed, badly written and out-of-date by the time you get them;
partly because they're increasingly controlled by large media empires with narrow political interests, so the diversity of political opinion expressed is extremely narrow and there are no papers which reflect my own political opinions;
but mostly because it's just so much easier to sit down at my desk, and either before starting work or in the inevitable quiet bits of the working day, just scan through my favourite news sites (of which/. is one).
I know a lot of people say they find screens hard to read from. I don't: I read from a screen all day every day, it's my normal mode of working. By contrast, I don't find reading from broadsheet newspapers at all convenient - they're too big to handle comfortably in almost any normal reading situation.
And I strongly agree with Jon's comments both on the quality of technology news in newspapers and their understanding of what constitutes culture. I have never read a story about the Internet in a newspaper which didn't contain at least three fundamental misconceptions in the first paragraph; and I find the idea that 'culture' is represented only by the forms popularised by the Austro-Hungarian empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries risible in the extreme.
And, in Scotland at least, the tabloid-sized newspapers contain nothing but salacious gossip about vacuous 'celebrities' in whom I have no interest.
Being from Northern NJ and all, how dare you predict the death of newspapers when you have one of the best up there - "The Record"
Basically, I've been to a lot of different places and seen local papers, and most of them are not very good and would best be used lining a bird cage. The Record, on the other hand, is one of the most consistently GREAT newspapers around. The columnists are top rate, the news is very unbiased, in-depth, and complete (local and national, with national stuff usually taking priority over the local without sacrificing the amount of either), it has MANY sections full of information, it's a good source of local and national ads as well as local classifieds, it's very easy to read, the Sports section is probably the best in the nation (a lot of the columnists do national work, some are regulars on ESPN.com), and in general it's pretty much a standard in Northern NJ. Not being there at the moment, I miss it. Every time I get a chance to go back up to NJ, I always make sure I get some copies of it.
Katz, you know about The Record, and you know that a lot of people read it, and you know that it's very useful and enjoyable and it does a very good job at what it's supposed to do. So why are you predicting the death of newspapers? Sure, a lot of the small-town ones are getting trampled by what's available on the Internet daily, but I think a newspaper like The Record ain't going anywhere anytime soon. I think that there is room for quality newspapers in a world dominated by the Internet, even if just because we're not at the point where EVERYONE can get their Internet news up-to-date in the subway, at the breakfast table, or on the toilet yet.
Newspapers have a future if they choose to recognize a few things:
You need to develop into a wider array of offerings, such as a web component, 'journals' aiming at a specific segment, etc. Not only that, you need to task each component correctly: breaking news doesn't belong in print, and in-depth analysis requiring staring at pixels should probably be in print (with better resolution and contrast than most screens).
Alternatively, you could continue to drive your product towards either the traditional readers who are averse to technology (and who are having increasingly bad eyesight, or are even dying of old age) or to the ignorant masses who don't know how to use technology (the Globe, the Daily Mail, other tabloids). For any newspaper of record these are not valid options.
Here's a convenient hashtable for planning the future of newspapers:
breaking news: web/broadcast
in-depth analysis: print
reader participation & feedback: web/email
where to make $$: charge more for print media and reduce the # of print ads, while charging nothing for web and using web ad revenue. Consider licensing your name to broadcast media and/or public affairs shows that meet your ethics and accuracy criteria
comics: large, both in print and on web;)
One major criterion for selecting a particular newspaper is the quality of its analysis. Another is the quality of its editors. Use these where they would do the most good (analysis of the issues behind the news, editorials, op-ed contributors). Don't be afraid to make your print arm smarter and more concise: think Investors Business Daily here, but with world news/politics rather than business news as the target. Papers like IBD and magazines like The Economist have the right idea. Discuss the history of issues, discuss their connectedness, bring up multiple viewpoints and rationales. Take the time (and column inches) to do this.
Remember the brand. People turn to The New York Times or The Washington Post when they want to read the canonical news. Use that (responsibly of course;) to your advantage, and offer multiple levels of readership (free gets the news, low-budget gets some analysis, high-budget gets the whole kit&kaboodle). Note the one big success in online paid-subscriptions, WSJ interactive, offers a _lot_ of content (more than the print) and functionality.
Newspapers can survive, even (especially!!!!!) local papers, but only if they eschew oldthink...
Things that interest me, in a general sense- although it might seem rather specialized.
I don't get any newspapers. I'd be somewhat more likely to get them if I had a wood-stove and had a use for burning them afterwards. I _do_ get some publications, though, and this tells you something about what I'd want from a newspaper. I get 'em from Baker's or a local bookstore, in one case by subscription.
I get MacAddict by subscription based on their habit of providing a CD-Rom with large numbers of recent programs and demos and things- it's like a sort of miniature MacOS Freshmeat or something. This is farthest from what a newspaper would need to be for me to buy it. I get Cinefex when it comes to the bookstore- this is a quarterly movie special effects journal that is extremely in touch with its industry and teaches me many things and gives me ideas. I get various ultralight and homebuilt-airplane magazines at Baker's (an office supplies store), because they're fun to read- I tend to scan them to see if there's any particular article appealing enough that I'd want to have the magazine around indefinitely.
In all of these cases (least so for MacAddict!) I am also interested in access to the advertisements- this is because on the one hand pro cinema effects technology, and on the other ultralight aircraft equipment, isn't a thing I see in daily life, or locally. (computer hype is everywhere and I'd be happier if MacAddict didn't even run advertisements:) )
So, logically, the way to sell printed paper to me is to deal with an area I want to know about, but can't get local access to- to deal with it expertly, knowing more than I do and knowing who else to interview and publish and write about- and to put me in touch with an entire community including pundits who know more than I do and advertisers selling specialised products that I don't ever see anywhere else. Do all that and I buy the printed paper- it's that simple. I don't say it's _easy_, but it's not particularly mysterious.
One interesting side note is that to do this, you positively have to take an interest in the subject matter to the point of being passionate about it. There's no room at all for token coverage and having your real focus be getting money from me. If you can't out-geek me in the area I want to hear about, then I'll tend to see through that right away and drop you like a hot rock. Whatever the common business wisdom is these days, if you want to sell a newspaper or magazine or journal, sincerity isn't just some selling point: it's the main reason for anybody to be listening to you. Who the hell would listen to somebody who didn't really care what they were talking about as long as they sold ad space?
So I have friends who routinely read newpapers, and I am at least as knowledgeable about the world as they are. How?
- USA today online (for the worldly part of me) - Slashdot (for the dork in me) - The Daily Show on comedy central (hits all the major topics, and I nearly bust a gut watching)
Honestly, what else do you need on a daily basis? Every major story appears in one of the above, and USA today/slashdot will provide additional links.
Why should I read the newspaper everyday and be hit with a front page of murders, killings, drugs, death, and politics and other sensationalism, when I can turn on the Daily Show, get the same basic info and laugh myself silly in the process?
"You want to kiss the sky? Better learn how to kneel." - U2
I was a journalism major and worked for five years at a 25000 circulation daily in a city of 80,000 in the midwest/south central U.S. The reason I got into newspapers was I thought you made a difference. In reality you don't. General observations about papers:
A Big thing is what Jon mentioned, they still act as if they are in the breaking news bussiness. More analysis, etc. pieces needed, but they are scary for publishers because it blurs the news/opinion line.
This leads to the Really Big Point. Newspapers in particular have been led down a path of "objectivity" in the U.S. mostly because of the constant attacks from the right for "bias." As a result, "objectivity" in U.S. papers has led to what I call "quote counting". Our political reporter at the paper I worked for (who covered state legislature as well), always made sure to present both (i.e., Dem & GOP) sides to an issues, often to the point of counting the number of quotes he gave each side. If a Dem called him with a "story", he called a Republican rep and "got both sides".
What's wrong with that? Well, too often reporters don't do the obvious which is to say "that's crap!". The reason they don't is alluded to above. If a Dem proposes a bill and the reporter does a lengthy investigation, talks with experts, files Freedom of Information requests, etc, all to (ultimately) write a piece that says "this is probably not a good idea is you look at all the facts", they get reamed even if they have a Republican quoted many times in favor of the idea. They get reamed by the GOP, they get reamed by the publisher, etc. Reverse the parties? Doesn't matter (I know the right will hate that). I could take the exact same political story to my rabid GOP booster neighbor and to my left-wing mother and BOTH OF THEM WOULD SAY IT WAS BIASED!
Anyway, so the reporter is not ALLOWED to share the context of the story with the reader. This is what NPR does, for instance, that makes it so good. One reason, I think, is that it is easier for a reporter to use their voice to make a point about whether they believe a person is telling the truth.
Anyway, I've gone on and on here. I'll wrap up with this summary: Papers fall into one of four categories these days:
1. Big city dailies. These are sometimes locally owned, mostly chain. All mass and no substance for the most part. The above, fully research analysis piece would probably get sent back for several rewrites, but published. Unfortunately, it would be buried well in the back and very few people would see it. Note: In a family-owned paper, it would only get published if it jibed with the publisher's political beliefs.
2: Medium size papers, locally owned. The above article would not get published. Locally owned small papers can't afford to piss off ANYONE. They are doing too poorly financially and can't lose advertising revenue. Almost all businessmen of any stature in a medium to small town are active politically (on both sides). They buy the ads. Also, sometimes the publisher's family is split politically, which makes in even worse. The paper I worked at, for instance, could not publish ANY stories on Abortion, because the brothers were split on the issue. POOF! A major issue in America is never mentioned. Isn't the news fun?
3: Medium to small papers, chain owned. The above article would never get written because they would never have someone on staff to do it. Chains cut paper staff to the bone and salaries too. Maybe a talented person is at the paper, but chances are they do a zillion things besides reporting and don't have weeks to spend on a story like that.
4: Alternative weeklies, etc.: The above story would get written if it jibed with the publishers political beliefs, but readership (as opposed to circulation) at these papers is tiny. Very few would read it, and many would reject it's conclusions because the paper is "biased"
I'd be more than happy to share some of my reading habits with you.
Newspapers have never quite tickled my fancy, I've always had a hard time to tackle an overly large and totally untame sheet of paper. The times I do read something news worthy would be over a person's shoulder or when it appears in a more tame form (ie. cut into pieces).
On the average, being a geek, I'm a real busy person and would give almost nothing to the major newspapers out there (but I'v seen the new Onion), politics and gossip just does not delight me. The only time you do see me get over my boredom and read something in default format would be to turn the newspaper on it's back, and explor the last few pages in the hope of finding something comical to entertain.
The same goes for traditional books. I am an avid reader, but over the last few years, I've been slacking very badly (since it's just not economically possible to read a book anymore nowdays). All sorts of constraints apply when reading a book.
My solutions arrived in the form a small electornic device (which I immediatly dubbed 'garo' -- a long lost feline friend). This device was a PalmOS based Handspring [handspring.com] Visor Delux, with 8mb ram and the ability to upgrade using an unique hardware modular slot (even though it's flash is not upgradeable).
After having exhausted my batters in less than a week (of continuous play with the Visor), I decided to explore the waste expances of software [palmgear.com] available for PalmOS. I installed utility after utility, getting delighted with the slightest twist of a coding wizard (and yes the little mirror program that turned your palm screen black did send giggles up my spine and entertain a whole load of female friends).
One of the delightfully free software that was buzzed down my USB connection into my Visor was AvantGo [avantgo.com]. Which was a mixture of channel based online newsfeeds and other resources (even/. could be tamed to exist inside my avantgo). I quickly started to apperciate the depth and breath of this free services and the number of channels available on my Visor. This is the time I started to read newsspapers seriously. I have the following channels on my Visor, CNet's News.com channel (updated puter type microsoftish news), ExploreZone (Scientific not so in depth news), HollyWood.com (Movie times for my city! very important -- daily as everyting else), New York Time ( traditional media now readable), PalmCentral/PDABuzz, Slashdot.org (Oh baby.. this could be created by making a custom channel in avant go and putting this URL [slashdot.org] in), The weather channel (Ok, not so necessary in the desert:))), USAToday (fine with me), Wired News (Some low tech is fine while doing the daily garbage disposal).
I take my visor everwhere, it fits snuggly in my pocket and feels very conforatble in my hand. All channels are updated at least once a day. I usually update early morning and in the evenining. News is read where I happen to be:)
Now that takes care of news.. What about books?! It took me over a month to get into books on my Visor and man.. Now I'm reading almost 2 books a week after that. My fav doc reader would undoubtably be Bill Clagett's CSpotRun [32768.com], A GPLed reader that is undoubtably the king of all Doc Readers out there. It has the ability to make the fonts closer, to turn the text into every single position known on the pilot (read from the sides or upside down?), autoscroll, drag scroll, scroll using the pageup-pagedown (fun!), and anything you could contribute! Ebooks are fun! Most books from the gutenberg project have been converted into ebooks over at MemoWare [memoware.com] also you could OCR any book you own and convert it into doc format using the linux doctoolkit [linuxbox.com]. Others check here [memoware.com]. I have read War and Peace (over 1/2 million words) by Tolstoy (free on tolstoy.org [tolstoy.org]), re-read Most books from William Gibson, Douglas Adams, Arthur C. Clarke and various other entities. I've also had the pleasure of reading classics such as ShakesSpeare, SunTzu, Tolkein, Plato, Confucious and many others right on my PDA.
Overall, the handheld computer with it's extreemly large memory (yes books in electornic format are tiny!) has been the only reason why I've gone back and read so many books (not to mention carry around so many techical notes and moste of the relevant HOWTO pages). I would recommend a handheld PDA to anyone who reads it and encorage them to read electornic Newspapers and e-books on a regualar basis.
The Inverted Pyramid really should be used on the net a lot more then, considering the amount of times that my browser has gone down when I was half done reading some article.
PS: I'm sort of serious, and this definitely *is* on topic. Crash resistance is one of the major advantages that newspapers have over the average PC.
The book I got (probably from gutenberg project and not tolstoy.org) was partitioned into 9 books which were easy to read. Tolstoy.org has the book in one huge lump of txt file:) You could always cut into books (9 books in war and peace) and read them a book at a time..
Why would I want to re-read yesterday's news that I already read yesterday online?
Even for historical purposes, there are much better searchable archives online. Physical newspapers aren't searchable.
Why would I want someone's opinions of whom I don't know, mired in an outdated technology infecting the story? This is exactly why don't watch local news on TV. KEEP YOUR OPINIONS TO YOURSELF. Just the facts, ma'am.
Why would I want to get black ink all over my hands and clothes?
Why would I pay 100% of the cost for something that I would be interested in 5% of? A physical newspaper has too much information, more than want to know, or worse yet, doesn't have what I want to read about because it didn't fit into their projected demographic.
Newspapers use unfair labor practices (Detroit News and Free Press for example).
It isn't electronic. I can't easily copy/paste articles into emails, notes or documents on my computer.
(There are nearly 450 comments already posted on this story, so I don't really know why I'm even bothering. But hey.)
Here in Colorado, we have three major papers: The Rocky Mountain News The Denver Post The Onion
No, I'm not joking. The Onion has a HUGE circulation. You KNOW you've heard of it. Hell, you probably read it. It's Coloradan, baby. Boo-yah.
In a way, The Onion is the best of the three. Sure, it doesn't provide any actual news (aside from concert listings and music/movie/book reviews), but it puts more humor in one place than any website I've ever visited, and for free to boot. But The Onion is also conscious of the web, so you can read the issue from one or two weeks ago online (The website also allows Coloradans to read their Columbine spoof, which was edited out of our region's hardcopy papers.). There's nothing like picking up an Onion at one of the campus newsstands to read on the bus ride home;)
Anyway, considering the "real papers". For me, the Post basically flunks out on general principle, since it's a two-fold paper, meaning it's well over 4 square feet when unfolded, making it basically impossible to read. And if that weren't enough, it's articles tend to be less articulate, about less important issues, and of a generally lower quality. But it does carry Dilbert;)
The News, OTOH, is a one-fold paper, has clearly written articles on topics of importance, and carries Garfield, Peanuts, Robotman, and Shoe.
But no one really cares about that. The point is the *function* of the paper. From my POV, papers are the best source of local news. If I want to get local news from TV, I have to: 1. sit through commercials 2. sit through sports 3. sit through human interest stories 4. sit through the barrage of violent crime reports Plus more crap that doesn't come readily to mind, I'm sure. And I can only get it at 4, 5, 9, and 10 o'clock. What a bunch of suck. The paper I can read anytime I want. I can ignore the ads and the lame stories. Plus there's the classifieds. No online job search lists as many jobs as the paper. All the used car search engines put together don't total a tenth of the auto listings. And eBay is the only even marginal substitute (that I know of) for the misc stuff, like musical instruments, pool tables, yadda yadda yadda.
Anyway, if I had a point, it's forgotten. Take it or leave it;)
1. Newspapers usually devote more than 30 seconds to important stories and the sound-bite from the TV broadcast occupies one or two lines from a 100-line column.
2. Newspapers generally stand as responsible for what they say and are genuinely embarrased when they mis-state the truth. Newsprint may be temporary but it is permanent enough to keep them honest.
3. If it is an important and controversial topic I tend to read the newspaper for the truth. Newspaper stories generally segregate fact from opinion with care and that makes them particularly valuable.
4. Newspapers keep editorials and content separate.
5. Reading the entire content of the TV news takes considerably less than 30 minutes -- particularly if you simply read the first paragraph of the story and go on as the TV news people usually do.
Writers try hard to cover stories using a vocabulary that an eighth grader can comprehend. That is not always easy and is particularly difficult when the topic is science or technology. -- Have you ever tried to explain what you do to an eighth grader with a good general education? I'll bet Linux is not a major topic in his life and news of computers is not particularly exciting.
As a group/. readers are considerably more educated than the general population; particularly in science and technology. To expect those topics to be dealt with in a newspaper and satisfy us is unreasonable. Sometimes I suspect that newspapers stay away from topics they can't adequately explain since when they fail the truth is sacrificed.
I truly hope that newspapers succeed in getting their content onto the web and survive as a business. Should they fall silent the population will have lost their primary (IMHO) source of information.
Not that it discredits your argument, but most people in the US DO live in metropolitan areas. 1998 US census projectsions have the following Metro Population 216,478,090 Non Metro Population 53,820,434 So there is only a market of 53 million people for the papers that you are talking about. Katz is completely correct in assuming that most of the papers are delivered to metro areas and read by metro citizens. It is nearly inarguable that local papers will not die in the next 20 years. But what about the larger, more "wired" metro populations? Do they seriously have a need for paper based news? It is a very interesting question.
I personally find myself much better informed by not reading the paper and using that time to read news websites. That, coupled with the complete misrepresentation by the media on technology issues, makes paper based news just hard to handle. However, the local collage news paper (U of MN Daily) is filled with interesting local news and events that I care about. But I only read that because it is free. *grin*
In short, I think that papers will definately live on in the local scene. Most likely, they will be religated there as more and more people get online and have less and less need for world news. Perhaps there will be a second wind in subscribership when they only report local issues and news. I myself would sign up for such a paper. In the end, time will tell.
One area that cybernews sites could really use some work is very local news. How many more people would read an online news site if it had news about their neighbourhood and area of large cities, or just their town even?
They could sub-contract the local news writers to do the stories that would be put instantly on the online version.
In my opinion, the television newsmedia is quite possibly the worst thing to ever happen to America. It may not have killed anyone (although they love it when that happens), but it does something much worse: it breeds ignorance.
They bally about the most sensationalistic news that have no real impact on a person and don't even give mention of truely important things. So much so, that I don't even watch any television news.
The Internet fulfills what TV newsmedia used to be best at: providing instantaneous coverage of important news events. Newspapers, while not the most immediate news source, provide a more indepth and better researched look at things. They are also not as sensationalistic.
Consequently, regarding what you said that a frontpage story about McCain beating out Bush, I had not heard about that. However, even if I had, I appreciate the much more indepth look that is in the newspapers rather than the cursory reporting done by the television newsmedia.
The one thing that I would appreciate much more in the newspapers is more technology coverage. I also find that the minimal coverage found in most newspapers is not very well researched with glaring inaccuracies. While I appreciate the increased technology coverage found in my local newspaper, The Boston Globe, I find that it is still not enough.
I still find it odd that there is so much more coverage about a small thing half a world away than there is about some important thing related to technology.
This is truer than I'd like it to be - two of the three newspapesr I've purchased in the last year I snagged because of the crimes reported therein. Where else can you read about seventeen-year-olds snagging credit card numbers out of "chat rooms", using them to buy ten-plus grand worth of merchandise from Amazon, and getting stung by seven cops after they let their entire class know about the operation?
Even that coverage is pathetic, though. The opening line from the cc-fraud story: When you build a high-tech world, you open yourself up to high-tech crime...
That about sums up my uses for the paper. I still pay $13/mo for my local newspaper, and the average daily edition has comix and local sports. Monday has a section all about technology (and since I'm in Raleigh, NC, this is pretty good... regular contributions from MetaLab, etc.) and Saturday has real estate listings (I'm looking for a new house). Otherwise, it all ends up in the bottom of my rabbits' litter pans!
I no longer get my local paper delivered to my home because my paper boy has proven to be very unreliable.
I do not get it at the newstand every day, but practically every day, and the reason I do so is primarily for the local news section and the joy of reading the OP/ED section to see what the local people have to say about things.
There are in fact about 5 regulars who write editorials that I look for every time I open that section. They tend to be quite entertaining if not insane.
Plus the rantings of our own local psycho mayor make for an interesting read.
Where do I go for other news?
Online I go to the NY Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today.
The real question here might be whether or not printed newspapers will exist in 10 or 15 years.
Will they? Who knows, but probably not.
I for one would enjoy having all of my "newspaper" choices delivered to my huge LCD flatpanels located in every room of my home via an incredibly fast net connection, and we all know it's coming.
Will my older relatives enjoy this? No, certainly not, and they'll continue buying regular papers until the day they die.
But I suspect the fast-paced technology world will make paper "newspapers" obsolete, and they'd all better prepare for that day.
The Internet news sources are far from up to speed. CNN.com is basicly the best news source I have found and it is simply skimming the headlines.
I get my local news from www.hotcoco.com not much more than a reprint of a local newspaper.. and I read the newspaper that runs it... Contra Costa Times...
It will be a while before Internet news can really replace newspapers... It has the potental for depth of any given subject.. but that depth is unexplored.
On the other hand... I don't watch TV anymore... TV news dose have the advantage of bringing the news quicker... The Internet can do this as well but I don't see it happening yet... It would be nice to see some rapid and indepth reporting done on the Internet... it can be done... a Quicky rapid.. and maybe at the end of the day a detailed indepth...
The news media outlets know what we want they simply need to learn how to deliver it... Slashdot is a good example of one delivery system... I saw a nice Java applet that dose a good job (Ug Java is evil... puke Java evil.. ok enough of that) such news tickers offer headlines... offering thies to websites is a good idea.... Also <a href="http://slashdot.org/code.shtml">Slashdot</a> let's websites carry headlines from Slashdot over.. porviding a link back to Slashdot... it's more effective than banner adds:)
As everyone discovers how to use the Internet for news delivery they will expand the covrage of the news available. As they cover more users they'll offer more content.
Of course the talkback feature on Slashdot is a huge hit and a plus for ANY news agentcy... Forget media bies.... When people can post replys directly to any given news story Media bies is no longer an issue.. instead of one leading bies the readers end up being exposed to every posable bies under the sun... So instead of zero bies (a very hard mesure to achive with out slicing valuable information) you get EVERY bies.. No one agenda takes over... and the masses are informmed:)
Running the complete text of speeches, not just campaign speeches but Parliament speeches too, was a regular occurence in the Times, in London, in the 19th century. No idea why it stopped, but I can only guess cost or audience considerations.
Parliamentary prodeedings in New South Wales are available at the Hansard [nsw.gov.au] page.
That sort of thing seems more like a web function to me - frankly, square-inch for inch, news pages are more expensive than web space. If you want full text dumps, the web would be the place to put them (provided you could pay someone to transcribe them...).
Myself, if I'm looking for raw info on news, I go to the web, if I want commentary, I go to the papers. I don't think this is an intrinsic feature of the web, but whenever I'm looking for information on the web, the sheer volume of irrelevancy/inanity overcomes me.
Our business in life is not to succeed but to continue to fail in high spirits.
-- Robert Louis Stevenson
Newspapers will not die. (Score:1)
Horses for courses (Score:1)
Web based news allows quick and easy correlation, and that means you can easily see more sides to the story. A great example of this is www.newsnow.co.uk which is great to get a themed view of the world.
Yes newspapers will survive, but I think sites such as NewsNow allow you to see how different factions report the same news.
antediluvian, not anti-diluvian (Score:1)
history repeats itself (Score:3)
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
Still read newspapers ... but not for long (Score:1)
The one poster was correct though -- the advantage of the newspaper is that I can read it over lunch. But if I could get a Palm-like appliance with very cheap access costs for the net, then I'd ditch the physical newspaper altogether.
In the long run, the newspaper business is almost certainly going to migrate completely to the net.
I cannot read... (Score:1)
"This column was inspired by an e-mail from a newspaper editor, asking me if I knew what might make the people who read Slashdot want to read daily papers. I said I didn't know, but that I would ask."
So, here lies the commercialization of Slashdot. We are marketing guinea pigs now?
James F. Bickford
Sys Dev Assistant
Electronic Interface Support
I like the newsPAPER. (Score:1)
Fft.. (Score:1)
Plus, it makes the metro ride way less boring in the morning.
E-News doesn't "stay" as long or cover local news (Score:1)
If there was a good paper in Portland. (Score:1)
Unfortunately, the only papers here in Portland, OR are: The Oregonian (elitist corporate rubbish), the Willamette Week (elitist corporate rubbish masquerading as elitist proletarian rubbish), and various ultrasensationalist political rags like The Alliance and Socialist Worker.
Digital Ink (Score:1)
that can successfully make the transition.
If they don't start looking at solutions like this, and online subscriptions soon, there won't be much left in five or ten years, at the rate we're going.
-
Qualities of paper vs screen viewing (Score:1)
For me one of the most important issues is the relative qualities of viewing content on paper (reflected light) against content on screen (emitted light source).
I find paper based material a lot easier to read, and I have a suspicion that it is something to do with this reflection vs emission of light: my eyes get tired a lot quicker looking at screens. Are any slashdot readers aware of any research into this area? love to have some references / URLs.
Also of course I think there is the issue of quality of type on paper versus pixels on screens, the area that can be shown on one printed page/screen without needing to access a navigation device (like mouse or scrollbar or turning the page); and the sheer tactile pleasure of paper (though not always with cheap printing ;-) )
Sometimes papers are better than you think... (Score:2)
Large, national papers can only get maybe to a regional level of what's going on, and I can get that online (Yahoo, CNN, etc). Regional/local newspapers have more specific news (traffic pattern changes, news of the local buidling inspector taking bribes, etc), which is usually news you don't even get on the radio or local TV, since it is so local.
When I set up Yahoo for news, I have it set to the news that I want to see. However, that's not necessarily the news that interests me. Newspapers let me open the page, scan headlines, read the first few lines of an article to get context, and read it if I'm interested. I can do this on an entire page in just a few seconds. Doing the same amount of looking online can take a minute or two (load page, scroll past ads, read line, realize I don't like it, back, scroll to next article, click, load page, etc). Now multiply this times 50-60 pages, and you can see that newspapers give you the best overall view of news.
Here's my prediction: The Big Guys (NY Times, USA Today, etc.) all go online and give up the dead tree business. The strictly regional/community papers survive.
There's still a place for newspapers (Score:1)
Of course the demand for newspapers will fall, but there will still be a demand until someone works out a way to make some real money from a news site.
still read newspapers (Score:1)
A daily and a small town weekly.
I also read several magazines monthly
and still read paper based books.
Amazing.
I can write comments in my books but have a
hard time doing that with a computer based
format. (This is not a comment of the same
kind)
cellulose ain't data (Score:1)
plenty of life left in newspapers (Score:1)
It's an important area of coverage that too many papers have been ignoring as they try harder to compete with either Newsweek or CNN. Local and regional news has inherent value that just won't get covered by any other source.
On the web front, if newspapers choose to expand into real-time internet coverage, they are indeed competing directly with the CNNs of the world, and without the massive resources of the national media outlets. But here again, newspapers can give breaking news on the web that would not be worthy of interrupting Oprah for for a broadcast update.
i say newspapers can do perfectly well serving their communities, which is really their original and best purpose. They just need to focus on what those communities are in the cyber age.
- Bill Connell, U of MN journalism grad
I'm sick of looking at a monitor all the time! (Score:1)
Oh ya, try reading Slashdot while cuddled in bed with your sweetie at 10:00 on a Sunday morning
Sitting in front of a computer all day (Score:1)
Until we get _much_ better digital paper, I don't want to give up my newspaper.
Newspapers are out of touch (Score:1)
There is far too much privacy invasion reporting and fact twisting in the print media so I do not generally read it. I don't generally watch TV news for the same reason. On a very occasional basis I will buy a paper because it has a story on something of local interest that hasn't been reported elsewhere or to get a different perspective on said local item. However, I do not read the paper to get facts; I read the paper to try and discover what the real facts are by comparing several ostensibly independent sources.
In the current age of news channels being on top of the latest news and internet sites posting news five minutes after it happens, there is no need to put international news on the front page of news papers. Put local interest stuff on the front page.
Also, include more "good" news instead of the human suffering pieces that seem so common. I, for one, am sick of reading how the system failed Johnny or how some freak hurt Sue. Give me something about how a good samaritan was there to stop some freak from hurting Joanne. Give me news about scientific (or other) breakthroughs. Forget about hyping the crime that is going on.
Most of all, do NOT sacrifice facts for a sensational story. Do NOT invade privacy of anybody for a sensational story. Do NOT intentionally emphasize one fact over another to mislead the reader while not exactly telling a lie. (The same goes for non-print media.)
Well, that's my 47.2 cents worth.
Problems with Papers (Score:1)
Second, is the whole content matter. I don't care about sports, but that's a major part of the paper. I also don't care about gardens or home decorating, but they have sections in the sunday paper. It is a complete waste for me to buy this and for them to print it for me. Further, it is a pain to dig through the paper looking for the information I want, discarding the chaff I could care less about. Again, an electronic format lets me define my preferences and lets the provider track my reading habits to better tailor presentation to me, as an individual.
Honestly, I don't see any reason to go back to newspapers and I doubt they could come up with changes that would adequately address my concerns. I think that they'd be better off adapting to the times than trying to hold onto the current form of their industry.
Eric Christian Berg
Mandatory Retirement (Score:1)
I'm not a newspaper reader, and the newspaper in my area is pretty 'fancy' (The Detroit News / Free Press). I read things I get something out of, and I haven't seen a newspaper yet that I could learn something from. The news is outdated, often biased, and generally uninformative (newspapers generally have two article types: "This Happened" or "Be Afraid of This"). The writing is barely seventh-grade, and often so shoddy that I get fed up mentally correcting gross grammatical errors, such as commas, spelling, and sentence structure. (If you're a grammar fanatic, though, try attacking a newspaper with a red pen--very satisfying!)
In short, they're ugly to look at, preachy, badly written, and WAY too often, innacurate. The fact is, that's not just outdated media, that's BAD media. New or old. But still...I would certainly pick up a newspaper in the future, if one landed on my doorstep that I felt I could actually learn something from (other than as a grammatical exercise). But again, Mr. Katz is right--I don't recall having EVER seen a newspaper even make an effort to better itself. They're a retirement-community commodity, and as those people die off, most likely, so will the newpaper.
irony? (Score:1)
They don't tell us things we don't know. They don't offer us good writing or strong opinion.
i just have to say that this is pretty much the most hypocritical statement i've ever seen come out of anyone's mouth. who doesn't tell us things we don't know? who couldn't write his (ahem) way out of a paper bag (or, say, a college writing class)? if we can define "strong" to mean "researched" or "well-argued", i think i have you on a third count (though this is hardly fair).
of course newspapers tell us things we don't know. how else are we supposed to discover these things? from tv? not likely. tv news is awful.
what's the difference if the newspaper delivers its content to me on newsprint or on a web page? the new york times is the new york times.
and, by the way, if we're going to criticize people for printing things we already know, i think we ought to start at home. for instance, the previous story [slashdot.org] announces a service that has been around for _years_. of course, i think we're all pretty much familiar with this particular aspect of slashdot.
- pal
Search me (Score:1)
Hey sports fans! Print isn't dead! (Score:1)
It's the writing quality, stupid! (Score:1)
The vast majority of the stories come straight off either the AP or NYT syndicated feed;
The ratio of annoying human interest stories to insightful news analysis is depressingly high;
Almost everything in the paper sounds exactly like what one hears on the TV (and that with me trying not to watch TV!);
The New York Times is available on the web.
In fact, the only paper I ever read much anymore is the Times. Most Sundays I manage to dig up a copy (if I wake up early enough), and it provides reading material for the week. The Week In Review section and the Magazine are each worth the $3 that the whole paper costs, and I end up with reading material for the week.
And all that icky paper to recycle!
I'm still waiting (Score:1)
Bathrooms (Score:1)
It depends: Tech and/or content (Score:1)
On the content side, it depends. My local newspaper (The Kansas City Star) is pathetic. It is filled with fluff and crud and no real news. It is so community-oriented as to be worthless as a source of information about the world. It has almost become a news catalog instead of a news source. Newspapers need to return to real, substance-oriented news and journalism. I prefer newspapers like the NY Times, the Washington Post (on its good days), The Wall Street Journal, or the superb British newspapers like *The* Times.
The same is true of magazines. Newsweek, Time, and even US News and World Report are jokes, content-wise compared to, say, The Economist. (It is interesting to me that the papers and magazines which focus on economics are the good ones with a lot of substance.)
Oops. I've rambled a bit.
One final thought (not intended as flame bait): While I enjoy sites like Slashdot, I don't consider them the online equivalent of newspapers or a source of journalism. What Slashdot is to me is a "news catalog" where I can find interesting stories _done elsewhere_. To me, if Slashdot was truly a news site it would be creating its own stories and not just presenting interesting links.
Accurate reporting for a start! (Score:1)
NEWs, not bias and not human interest (Score:3)
It is impossibal to be unbiased, but we want unbiased. NPR for instance is credited of having great news, but listen closely and you realise they are baised for big goverment - they tend to cut off those advocating cuts as soon as they can without sounding like cutting them off. One person I know puts it this way: He reads the Syndny (Austrila) paper, the London (UK) paper, and the New York Paper (US). He would read more if he could read more languages. Each paper has a bias, and this way he can at least cancel them out. Get togather with Those papers, and agree that each will put togather one section of "important issues" from their area. That secion will be run included as is in each paper, and must be made only of stories included in their paper. The goal is to get their bias exactly as they have it. Anti-US if that is what their bias is on the news. Don't let them write specail watered down stories for you, get the meat of the matter and include it in it's entirity.
Learn to seperate news for human interest. The Kennidy plane crash of last summer comes to mind. This nobody, who had never done anything made the front page, and was considered a great tragity above the dealth of a friend of mine. When you look at it, neither one had done anything news worthy, but one had parents who did do newsworthy things. (BTW, don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing him for not being newsworthy, that is his choice - there is nothing wrong with making it and I respect him for making that choice. But the fact remains he wasn't news worthy) Likewise we have the Diana/Mother Theresa deaths, one which outweighed the other. In fact both were human interest and neither were news. For that matter in the US a obsolete royality of anouther country is not news whatsoever. (Except that it would be in the london section if you took my advice of the last paragraph. )
Speaking of Mother Theresa, hsa anyone really examined the critics of her? I was brought up being told continuiosly that she was a saint despite religious differences. Latter I found some critcism in less trust worthy places that I can't quite discount because it adds up. REport those stories. News is not always nice to read, and your job is to present that side, even if unpopular. Assuming of course that it is true.
Try making the comic interesting. Calvin and Hobbes won't come back, but find other commited ARTISTs who can draw something interesting. Yes this is fun, but all work and no play makes jonny a dul boy as it were. There must be come artists out there with talent that you can give half a page a week to. (Note I said half a page a week. If a creative person can't create enough for something every day give them once a week. Your columists don't all write every day. My favoirte columnists appears only on wednesday and sunday.)
Remember filler isn't everything. If you have enough ads for 50 pages, but only enough news for 20 pages under the normal forumla then raise the ad prices until you get the same income from 20 pages of well researched news and the rest of the advertisers decide to go elsewhere.
It is impossibal to be unbiased. Ideally every story would be jointly written by two people with explictily different biases. Send a rebublican and a democrat to the Democratic national convention and give each half the space. (If you have the sapce send a socalist, libratarian too, but evetially you can't afford to pay that many reporters and you miss the little important things because each wants to cover the same big thing)
When the newspapers become relavant I'll read them, but the fact is most days what appears on the front page is filler. Maybe it is the biggest news story of the day, but it isn't really important.
My local paper... (Score:1)
What newspapers are good at. (Score:1)
The timidity of newspapers is easily explained (Score:1)
Newspaper editorial boards, their publishers, and the media conglomerates are variously spun, pressured (i.e. your merger will go through quicker if you don't look under that rock) threatened, and bribed all the time, every day, by every government agency and interest group in existence.
It would be very hard to silence Slashdot: No union controls the presses, no regulators control the Internet feed, at least not nearly as directly as they do broadcast licenses. Despite the fact that Slashdot has a near monopoly stranglehold on Linux news and commentary, the DoJ has not yet formed an antitrust theory under which they could prosecute Slashdot.
The ad sales structure is also very different on the Internet. It is harder to put pressure on a Web site through advertizers, which can more-easily be replaced.
Not to mention all the usual things like getting wire stories directly, better investigative journalism from Antiwar.com, Newsmax.com, NandoTimes, etc. Except for a small and getting-smaller elite set of writers worth reading, the newspapers have no advantages, all the costs, and all the disadvantages.
Which all adds up to: old media is toast. There is no fix. It is as unstoppable as cars replacing horses. Have a nice day.
Yes, I still read newspapers: (Score:1)
I also read the newspaper to get an EXCEPTIONALLY biased slant on what is going on in the world, and to find out who has died recently.
Cant forget the funny papers either!
I usually find myself reading the article, then going online to find out the actual truth about what is happening.. (you should see the spin that the library flap in Holland MI is getting here.. "horrible people want your children to see porn at the library! Filters are GOOD things! " etc.. not one mention of any of the things I find online about the fallacies, or the agenda of the "sainted" AFA.. (dont sniff that flower Mighty Mouse.. thats OBVIOUSLY a cocaine reference..)
So yeah, I read papers.. its whether or not I believe them that is in question, and in most cases, I dont.
Maeryk
On the demise of newspapers and friends... (Score:2)
After a moment's reflection, it seems obvious why CS is on such a spectacular decline. Its target audience is people in the market for computer equipment, a niche that websites, augmented by search engines, fills dramatically better.
News, unfortunately for newspapers, is another niche where the net has tremendous advantages over traditional print media. And, of course, the list goes on and on.
Newspapers are doomed to drop to at least a shadow of their former scale and influence. My advice to newspaper owners and editors: bail out while you can still salvage some of your investment in money and experience. Don't wait until the market is flooded with ex-newspeople and the money is gone.
Save a tree. Don't buy a newspaper today.
Well...Since you're asking... (Score:1)
Some other ideas:
1 - Try printing a few articles that you didn't just crib from Reuters or AP newswires.
2 - Stop printing IT sections that deal with anything but the business end of IT. Unless you hire actual IT professionals to write the IT sections of your papers, you will always look like fumbling idiots. (by IT professionals I mean people who have worked for at least 5 years in the industry)
3 - Provide a means for us to add over one hundred whiny, irrelevant comments to the end of your articles. If you want to increase your readership, you must enable your readers to get first post.
4 - Include the word linux in all your printed material, particularly in every headline. IPO after a year or two and nobody on NASDAQ will care that your readership is zero.
5 - Provide some worthwhile news. Try and scoop everyone, just like you used to, back in the day. Woodward and Bernstein didn't hear about Watergate from the AP newswire, now did they? Make your reporters go out and find stories.
I prefer electronic media to newspapers because... (Score:1)
Of course I still read the newspaper. (Score:3)
Also, newspapers are a great filtering method. If I wanted to check up, say, the international news for the day, I'd be inundated with a flood of information. Yeah, CNN.com and other places do a great job, but newspapers provide an alternate source from a viewpoint that has at least a few hours to think about the story before posting it, and they know that it'll be almost 24 hours till anyone reads the story, so they don't jump to conclusions the same way TV news or web news often does.
And then of course there's the simple fact that it's much easier to lounge around the living room couch with a newspaper and breakfast than it is to do so with a computer.
Newspapers may change their format (Daily to weekly, more local news, etc), but they aren't going away anytime soon.
Discontinued my subscription (Score:2)
I do buy the paper in situations where I can't get to the Internet, like when I ride the train to work in the morning, and I still enjoy it. Longer, more in-depth reports can make a paper more worthwhile than a collection of articles on the Net.
It's sometimes claimed that books will become obsolete, but I'm sure they won't, because paper probably will always be a much better medium for delivering information than a computer screen with its damnable scroll bar. You can't scribble notes in the margin on your screen; you can't jam your thumb and index finger into two places you want to save; you can't fold it up and stick in your pocket and take it with you to the john. But newspapers will always have the great weakness of being a day behind.
Newspapers may have to become more like magazines to survive -- they'll need to publish longer, more researched articles with more depth than the daily news. These pieces will need more time to develop, hence requiring a weekly or monthly publication schedule rather than daily. But then, weekly and monthly magazines are already there, so the daily paper may really be on its way out.
We mustn't forget, however, that very many people still have no Internet access, and it will last a few years before the Internet is as universal as, say, television. That might keep the papers alive for a while.
Newspapers - yesterdays news (Score:1)
Both me and my wife work full time. There just isn't enough time in the day to futz around with a newspaper - the signal to noise ratio is just too high. It takes too much time to take in a daily paper (let alone the Sunday) when there is all the shopping, cooking, cleaning, and hobbying to attend to.
Small snippets of news inbetween TV shows, on-line stuff for me (even in a high-tech job there are always 1/2 minutes while I'm waiting for downloads or compiles or tests to finish etc.) snagged here and there, and that's it. We get our news already pre-digested 'cause that's all we have time for. It sucks, but that's life.
Oh, yeah. Jon forgot environmental conservation. Most people nowadays (especially the young) are a lot more concious of what they throw away. And a foot-high stack of newspapers every other week is not very appealing. Jeez, you could get together with a few neighbors, stack them all up together, and actually SEE the tree they cut down to make the paper.
No more newspapers for us - though we get at least a call a week trying to get us to subscribe.
How can they change that? Maybe focusing on local news more, local geography and businesses (new restaurants, real comparasons - ie "if you like *this* restaurant's food, you are sure to like *that* one too", where to find stuff so that the shopping part of our lives is easier - not coupons as it just takes more time), classifieds on a commission basis rather than an ad rate - so that people don't have to put money up front to sell something.
Oh, and how about newspaper collection as well as delivery. Just leave your old papers out and they get collected when the new ones arrive. Make sure they are recycled and use them again.
Observations after reading the morning paper (Score:3)
1. Most web sites are incredibly juvenile in comparison.
2. There seems to be a glaring lack of knowledge and experience on many review-oriented web sites.
3. There's an odd tendency on the web for people to latch onto weird marketing-driven causes--Athlon, GeForce, MacOS--and act like developments related to these products are newsworthy. In a newspaper, an article like "Buick to Revamp Interiors of 200 Lineup" would be obviosly a phony advertorial type of article. But on the web those topics are legitimized into real news.
What is "news"? (Score:1)
I read the New York Times every morning, and I find it packed with good writing, informed debate, and outstanding design. I found it completely hilarious that Katz suggested that papers have somehow missed out on the "Graphic Revolution", when nine out of ten websites are virtually unusable because of all the f**ing graphics which the designers pack in there. Memo to world: Pretty Graphics != Good Design.
Newspapers as news organizations seem pretty vital to American discourse right now. Possibly the actual way they deliver the news will change, but, frankly, computer display technology is going to have to get a lot better for that to happen. Even the most interesting things on the web are hard for me to read at any length, because of the massive eye strain. And I, for one, have not moved my computer monitor onto my breakfast table just yet.
But even that is only a small part of the story. Newspaper organizations do an extraordinarily complex job: collecting news, writing it up, editing it, filtering it, etc. They may do that well or poorly, but that job will still have to be done. As much as I love Slashdot, and as much as I talk to everyone I know about it being a new way for news to be distributed and commented on (and even sometimes created), I am very clear on the fact that Slashdot thrives because it exists in the midst of a landscape which is filled with "traditional" news outlets. It's the fact that Slashdot can refer readers to the "full story" elsewhere which makes the whole enterprise work.
Possibly, it would be interesting to consider some of these questions in terms of what people are looking to get from the news. For example, people want to know What Has Happened. Who won a primary? What price did Microsoft close at? What was the score in that baseball game last night? Television and the internet are excellent at answering these questions. However, people also want to understand the ramifications of those events in more depth: What does this mean for the next primary? What is the status of the Microsoft court case? How is the season going for the Red Sox overall? Currently, newspapers are my (and I suspect, many people's) preferred means of getting this sort of analysis of events as they happen. From a broader view, people want to step back and see these events in context of a longer story: What is it like being on the campaign trail? What is the history of Microsoft's monopolistic behavior? Will the Red Sox ever break The Curse? Magazines seem to answer these questions well.
Newspapers *can* have a place (Score:1)
For communities that are not as expansive as Minneapolis/St. Paul (to use a local example) and do not generate enough local news, that's what newspapers are reduced to... local print versions of national stories. Yet at the same time, these are the communities that are slightly behind the whole internet revolution as well.
I feel you can replace newspapers right now with a little work. Heck, I even got my parents back home finding what they wanted to see via various websites rather than being dependent upon print versions.
So until VCRs and TVs are fully web-enabled, I can't see how newspapers, in their present forms, will go away. They're just too convenient, too portable, and after 8 hours of staring at a 21" monitor at work, a nice change of pace.
in defense of newspapers... (Score:4)
Newspapers will always rule (Score:1)
Why Newspapers? (Score:1)
People said newspapers were going to cease to exist when radio came along. They were wrong. People said they were going to disappear with the advent of TV news. They were wrong. Now their demise is caused by the internet? Gee I think I've spotted a trend here...
The problem is this, newspapers are really cheap compared to the amount of content in them. TV and radio news are reduced to sound bites. Bandwidth and screen size have dictated similar constraints on the internet. Newspapers have no length constraints as such, so they can have more in-depth content. In theory they also could put the time into crafting well-balanced stories too, but for some reason they don't bother. In theory, they also can carry better local news, although my local TV stations do a good job of that too.
Newspapers also have an air of permamence about them and some people like that. The internet is changable, as is TV and radio, but paper is not.
Besides, when all is said and done, what am I going to light my fireplace with if I didn't have newpaper...
Newspaper media? Media in general. (Score:1)
Many of the points made in the original post are valid for the media industry as a whole. The newspaper industry is merely a subset of what is going on. Emphasis on surface over substance, sensasionalism over rationalism has been invading the media for quite some time. Newspapers are only suffering because they are saying the same thing the TV and Internet media are saying - only 24 to 48 hours behind.
For the newsprint media to really distiguish itself, it should stop following the trend of dumbing down media with flashy graphics and sensational stories. I stopped reading the newspaper when the stories began insulting my intelligence.
I agree that the newsprint media has a virtual monopoly on local events. However, it is a monopoly that they rarely exercise. This is due, in part, to big conglomerate media organizations that own news presses across the country (Gannett owns the paper here in Des Moines, IA). These large corporations beam in their stories via satellite to their various holdings each day where they are regurgitated onto print. A good local paper should be 99% local news and only 1% National/International.
It would be interesting to see how much print space is devoted to the Holland, Michigan debate on installing censorware in the libraries [slashdot.org] versus how much print is used up covering the Presidential hopefuls in their local paper. I doubt the censorship issue gets even gets 1/3rd the coverage. However, if the article linked above were printed in the local paper in Holland, MI, I'm sure it would spark new arguments in the debate.
Well, I've ranted long enough.
later,
kristau
Not "If" but "When" (Score:1)
An even bigger problem is that the "more educated" part of the newspaper-reading demographic is getting tired of reading things at the 2nd grade reading level that the average newspaper is written to. As a result, while newspapers tend to provide information on issues, it's at such a low level that there isn't enough information on some topics and too much condescencion(sp) on the other topics. And it's a lot harder for me to click a link in my newspaper to get somewhere for more information (heh).
For example, when the local media covered the DDOS attacks last week, they glossed over a lot of things that I found interesting and wanted to know more about. On the other hand, they were very careful to make sure that I knew what the Internet is a group of computer networks.
Before the rise of Internet news services like the sites provided by CNN, ABCNews, and (gasp) MSNBC, I didn't have much choice on where I got my news unless I wanted to spend a couple hours at a library reading papers from around the world. Now I can get summarized news and dig in to what I'm interested in to the level I'm interested in spending time on it, without relying on some editor at a newspaper with different priorities than mine.
Face it: newspapers are written to speak to the lowest common denominator in our society. We (we meaning "Slashdot readers") tend to be a much better educated group, and I for one don't have the patience to put up with a newspaper that's talking to me like I was 6 years old.
What I want from papers...by Timmy McCarthy, age 8 (Score:1)
a) I can receive the information daily on a handheld device via radio waves...with option to print.
b) the reporting is a bit more responsible. Stop misquoting people and check your references before you run the story.
c) I am able to influence what stories have follow-ups. I don't know how many times I've read the paper, found something interesting, and then "poof" it became non-news the next day.
d) the quality of writing improves. Stop gearing the articles to people with a 6th-grade reading ability.
Those are the only things keeping me from subscribing to a newspaper. Albeit, I still pick one up occasionally (once every 2 or 3 months) for the crossword, for the movie listings, or just to see if things have gotten any better since last I checked.
The statements are in descending order of importance.
Yours,
AEH
timeliness-depth tradeoff (Score:1)
So based on this, do newspapers have a future? If by newspapers we mean media that come out in discrete "editions" as opposed to continuously, then the question boils down to whether or not they provide some value for their more drawn out time scale. My impression is that most newspapers do not take adequate advantage of their comparatively leisurely time scale. Or, rather, most continuous news sources are able, by manpower or whatever other means, to provide coverage that is as good as most newspapers. There are exceptions (I like the NYT), but I can't see any purpose for newspapers that ask us to trade timeliness for no particular advantage.
I think this applies equally well to local news, even though most localities are as of the moment still best served by newspapers.
Newspapers still have a place. (Score:1)
Plus, I still have yet to find a suitable online replacement for the Sunday newspaper. I like being able to jump around in the newspaper a lot easier then I can on the newspapers web page. Plus, the battery won't die on the newspaper when reading it on a plane.
Yeah, newspapers are slowly dying. I'm sure the newspaper subscription of the future will be some kind of PDA style device that continually updates during the day and folds out to newspaper size. until that happens, a good ole newspaper is still easier to deal with.
how apropos... (Score:1)
"i don't watch the news, i don't read papers.. if it's not on slashdot, i don't know about it."
hessiebell
---
Newspaper and its alternatives (Score:2)
My 40 minute train ride every morning would feel that much longer without a newspaper.
For 35 cents, 5 days a week ($1.75), I get entertainment and information and news in one tidy little package.
Would I get a Pilot or some other similar device to read news when it becomes available?
Not a chance.
Newspapers, like I said cost me less than $2 a week. 52 weeks a year and I've only spent $104.
If I lose a paper, I won't get upset. I can buy another.
If I break a paper (rip, tear, mutilate), I won't get upset. I can buy another.
...and so on...
Mr Katz has the wrong question for commuters as I see it though. The correct question should be from the tech companies as in:
"What can we do to get a larger audience away from newspapers?"
Answers:
Make whatever it is durable and inexpensive.
-m
Wall Street Journal (Score:2)
The Wall Street Journal generally offers a quality of writing not generally found on the net, and I appreciate that. It's especially obvious to me on a daily basis, as my local paper is the Harrisburg Patriot, widely regarded as the WORST paper for a state capitol in the nation. Imagine U.S.A. Today, but much worse.
The WSJ has been around for a long time, but they fill a very different role than the average local paper. To a lesser degree, so do papers like the New York Times and the Washington Post. If anything, the local papers will go the way of the dodo in favor of the web (I know I get all my breaking news from AP/Reuters feeds).
That's my opinion, at least.
raisin of eatery (Score:1)
Unfortunately, in the new niche one needs to be trustworthy. Whenever I have been at a news event and later read the coverage in a newspaper, I have not recognized the event. This includes not only campus political demonstrations, but also more mundane events.
Now I realize that a newspaper needs to be sufficiently entertaining that folk will read it, but this really doesn't necessitate fictionalizing , and thus trivializing, the news event being covered. This requires good writing style. One doesn't need to turn every event into a tragedy or a musical comedy.
However, my experiences with the candor and honesty of newspaper articles cause me to read with humor when someone excorates Slashdot for being inaccurate.
The NY Times... (Score:1)
i enjoy the sections of the paper that aren't neccessarily "breaking news" - arts and leisure, lifestyles... either just to peek at what the rest is doing or to get out. sometimes it's nice to be able take the paper, a coffee and sit in the sun and read someone else's experience or opinion and be enlightened by another viewpoint... the viewpoints (yes, a gross generalization, but it's true sometimes) on the web, at least where i frequent usually, are often tech-centric... sometimes "old school wisdom" needs to be absorbed - and that, right now, is mostly going to happen through "old school" mediums.
The Newspaper of the Future (Score:1)
Newspapers are not on their way out. They are merely going through a slow period before they figure out how to harness the Internet to deliver news instantly.
The newspaper of the future will be an 8.5" x 11" sheet of flexible plastic that has an LCD-like display and an embedded processor and wireless connection. It will periodically download information from the Internet, either wirelessly on its own or wirelessly from your basement home server. The user will be able to choose how frequent the updates are and the content that they should contain.
Graphics capability can be modest. A little better than a DSTN Passive Matrix display should be enough. You should be able fold it up and carry it or throw it away, so durability will not be an issue. The key to this is maintaining a near constant, wireless high-speed connection. So Al Gore better quit fooling around with this presidential crap and go lay in some new DSL lines.
no (Score:1)
How can anyone look at the media circus surrounding JFK jr's death, or the current political campaigns, and possibly take the news media seriously? What a joke. The net isn't any better (it is perhaps worse), but at least there are mailing lists and so forth where one can get the press wires that don't generally make it into the mainstream.
A few weeks ago there was a revolution in Ecuador, massive labor strikes in India, but none of this was really in the news. I guess the little cuban kid was more important.
The lost art of reporting? (Score:1)
In regard to paper, Sunday mornings wouldn't be the same without the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal Weekend section and a pot of coffee. I think there is a lot to be said for sharing a physical paper with family members, and even reading a story together. My wife and I sat on the couch to read the full Ken Starr report together. It was great fun! Sure, someday you'll just spread out your folding display panel, but until then I do enjoy using dead trees once in a while.
What do we want? (Score:2)
When do we want it?
NOW!
That's all the newspapers need to know. They need to stop cowtowing to corporate sponsors, they need to quit toeing the line for the government. They need to go out, INVESTIGATE, and report. Newspapers will NEVER be able to update as fast as other info sources can, so they need to specialize in reporting the meat and reporting it right the first time. Find out about the corrupt lockheed engineer that took 2 million in bribes from the chinese to screw up the mars lander, etc... etc... That's what we want.
We want to know what REALLY happened in Somalia when those 'Peace Keepers' were in there. We want pictures, we want info. If we can't get it from a newspaper we'll get it from the 'net. The 'net has the advantage of a blazing fast response time, so the newspapers will have to overcome that by providing more QUALITY. I don't give a shit which celebrity got caught speeding last week. Tell me who just discovered what 3 identified genes do and how to control them!!
Kintanon
Online news needs to get even better (Score:1)
1. People who do not have "reasonable" access to online news sources. 2. People who do, and reads both traditional paper and online news sources. 3. People who only reads news from online news resources.
In #1, reasonable means the person has decent Internet access and is savvy enough to know where to get good, reliable and broad range of news. This is usually not difficult.
I think most people on Slashdot may fall in #2, leaning or moving toward #3. (Well, for me this is the case).
The appeal of information on the Internet for us is the same as the appeal of paper for those who do not sit in front of the computer 10+ hours a day. It's accessible. We who read online have the added advantage of being able to check several sources constantly, be able to filter by preference, and more importantly, we can have some kind of community feedback mechanism.
The newspaper is still a great medium to deliver information en masse. That's why we demand so much of it. Because it is spreading to so many different people. Online, the potential audience is huge. With newspapers, the actual audience is very large.
So would old style newspapers cease to exist? Not very soon. Will people read more stuff online? Absolutely.
But news online needs to be different from the traditional paper-based news simply because it is a different culture, a different audience. There needs to be real efforts to make good information and content available online, rather than just copy from the paper medium. Creators of said content must also see the potential for interactivity by the online community and leverage it. It's not like I'm saying anything new here, Slashdot happens to fall into this category. But the quality of the online only sources have not been as good as the traditional paper based ones. They are not as rigorous about the journalistic standards the traditional newspapers have (or should have) adhere to. Credibility is important.
Sheesh, I wish I wasn't doing other things when writing this. It might have come out a little more coherent.
daily vs. weekly papers (Score:2)
I long ago gave up on the local daily paper (the Sun [sunspot.net] ) not just because it's been surplanted by the Web and CNN but because it sucks. The lack of competition among local papers (Baltimore had three dailies when I was a kid) allowed quality to slide. While I'll pick one up if it's lying around, I haven't bought a copy in two or three years - I even forgot to pick one up when they had a big photo of me and an interview in their "Plugged In" section. (This was about the OLGA/Harry Fox Agency copyright battle. [olga.net])
However, I find the local "alternative" weekly City Paper [citypaper.com] to be useful; local news, event calendars, etcetera. Unlike the daily, it's not full of sections I have no interest in (sports, travel, "society", and the like). And when I'm done reading, the dogs get to pee on it.
The future? I'd like to see customizable newpapers. Assuming better quality than today's dreck, I might subscribe if I could say "Send me the comics, world news headlines, local news, and don't bother burying me in dead trees for the rest - I don't give a damn who won the football game and I get my tech news from /. so don't bother with you wimpy little PC column. Oh, and something above an eighth grade reading level, please."
I will always read newspapers (Score:2)
I like being able to carry a newspaper to the Caribou Cafe down the road on Sunday mornings and reading while I have my breakfast. I have a subscription to the AJC here in atlanta for the weekend papers. Newsprint still has portability. Sure, as wireless bandwidth gets more widespread and cheaper and as laptops get lighter and more portable, you will see people reading print mediums less and less but I want to curl up with a good BOOK or a good NEWSPAPER in bed at night. Not a laptop...I can already feel my eyesight going bad from staring at a computer screen all day long and then spending a couple of hours an evening catching up on personal business online. I need the break.
And as a side note that may disgust some and make others nod in agreement, It's easier to read a paper on the can than to find a good place to position a laptop. Sad part is, I do my best work in the "office".
Yes, I do read newspapers already! (Score:2)
The whole issue of "timeliness" is overblown. So what if I don't find out that Bush beat McCain in South Carolina for a few more hours? Most of those hours I was asleep, anyhow. Likewise for the "graphically impaired" issue. Why do I need all that eye candy, anyhow?
There are a few things that newspapers do really well that won't happen digitally any time soon, if ever:
1) They're convenient to read over breakfast, or in bed on Sunday morning.
2) They're conveniently organized. Now, you're saying "WHAT!!!???" Yup, they're conveniently organized. The world/national/major local news is in the first section, the local stuff is in the second section, and so forth. No, it's not organized by subject or anything. That's just right. I get to see more than just headlines; if something catches my eye, I'll read it.
I don't know how many equivalent pixels a newspaper page is; I'd guesstimate 30Kx50K or thereabouts for a single broadsheet page. That's so much more visible information than I can fit on my screen that it's laughable. Plus, the screen forces me to be in a certain place.
Like it or not, the "information revolution" is still a relatively small part of life. Eating, sleeping, having shelter and transportation, are still more important to our lives than what happens on the net. The majority of people still don't own computers. The same vapidity that permeates popular culture permeates cyberspace.
In my spare time I do hack. I do other things, too, and I need to do them more. I could use more exercise, which I've lost a lot of time on in the past few months due to a project (a print driver I'm working on). I haven't played my viola in a year, and I could use doing more of that. I've been on the net for upwards of 15 years (I'm a spry old 36). Yes, it's nice that due to the net there are people working on this print driver in Japan, Germany, and elsewhere in the US, but it's not my whole world either.
Software patents, DeCSS, and such are important (just ask my wife how angry I was when the injunctions were granted), but they really aren't the whole of everything. People aren't dying over them. Yes, it is important that sanity prevail here, and the current state of things isn't very sane, but big corporations have always been trying to take over everything and this is just the latest; we have to be just as vigilant as always. And we could use a little perspective beyond our little online world.
Don't get me wrong -- the net does bring important benefits. I've done a lot of research on various ailments and such that various members of my family have, and it's a lot easier to do than it would be in a traditional library, as one example. It can add a lot to life, if it's looked at as something more rather than a replacement for anything. But on the whole I think we're too wrapped up in our geek culture around here, and could use a little more getting out into the world of matter rather than just the world of information.
I stopped reading news papers years ago (Score:2)
Now, I realize that flashy headlines sell papers and get people's attention but the line between the tabliod press and the "serious" press has just about disappeared. The local news paper here in Memphis, "The Commercial Appeal" [gomemphis.com] is very bad about printing articles that are one-sided or appear to be one-sided. They are extermely bad about taking quotes out of context and reporting only the information that they think will make the most sensational story... not the most informative story. Furthermore, they rarely finish a story. They only report the initial "sensational" parts of the story but never follow up with "the rest of the story" For example, they might report on a crime that occurred and someone getting arrested. They will never follow up with a story on whether the person was found guilty and if so, what the punisment was.
I also do not think that the majority of people writing for the popular press is qualified to write about technical topics. You have all seen examples when they have misrepresented facts or have reported information that is flat out wrong- simply because they did not understand what they were writing about.
I do not live in a news void, however. I get the majority of the news that I am interested in from the Internet... the fabulous thing about the internet is (as you all know) that you can get information on a particular topic from many many different sources and come to your own conclusions... not to the conclusions of some reporter. As far as local news, I listen to the headlines on the radio and that's about it. If there is something that catches my attention, I will try to find out more about it.
What can be done to get me to read a news paper... get rid of the sensationalism, start reporting COMPLETE stories. Stop "dumbing down" the information and stop taking quotes out of context. Also, put the whole paper online.
What would we use in the birdcage? (Score:2)
They used to say freedom of the press applies only to those who own one - altho you have to have subscribers, delivery and circulation.
They used to be call the 'penny dredfuls'
Personally, I get most news, wx, sports and software updates from the ol' 28.8 modem - the weekend paper has been on the verge of being canceled for some time - it helps to fill the recycle bin so I get a few bucks off garbage pickup - but about all I read is Dave Berry and the comics Sunday morning to break from the monitor, and maybe the headlines if there's a tornado in town or Gates buys into the local shipyard - just did a 'google' search and didn't find any obvious articles about that but Gates is now tied for largest stockholder of Newport News Shipyard. (local news)
What a question. (Score:2)
I have a full electronic access to most of the journals I need for my work. I have them as a hard copy also downstairs, in the institute library. And though most of the scientific articles I find while surfing, and read after printing them out, the general "news and views" sections I read holding an old-fashioned magazine in my hand. Why? Because it is more convenient than a computer screen.
And getting to newspapers, even though I got most of the headlines from the Web /news /email, I read "Der Spiegel" every Monday. I read it on the bus (I have to travel about 40 minutes to get to the Institute).
I can imagine a device which could replace a newspapers and some of the books for me. I has an US-letter format, is very flat, with a cover over a high-resulution LCD. It is very light, so you can conveniently read it while in the bus, sitting on the toilet or lying in your bed. It does not cause the nausic impression before my eyes like the computer screen do. It does not break after I throw it at the bed side before going to sleep. I can take a pen and draw on the margins. It is water resistent, or at least it doesn't give you a nasty shock if you drop it into the bath tub.
Oh, and I forgot. It costs me $30. For each 6 months :)
Hope this helps, :-)
Regards,
January
Better Comix pages! (Score:2)
Interesting Data point (Score:2)
I recently was surveyed with a followup survey by the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88). This survey tracked several thousand (~40,000 at the start, ~25,000 as of the last followup) from high-school to present.
One of the questions in there was "How many days, on average, would you say you spend reading magazines, newspapers or other periodicals?" I had to as if online news websites counted. Without them, the answer would be 0, with them the answer is more like 6 or 7. The interviewer commented that they needed up update their survey. :-)
I find no reason to go back to paper news sources. They're too slow, too broad, and mostly pointless. I mainly browse over a newspaper if I'm stuck in line at Starbucks, and there I don't usually get past the headlines.
--Joe--
Newspapers - Crimes/Weddings (Score:4)
There are certain things I read online and others that I go straight to the daily paper to read. They both have their place.
-d9
It's the content, stupid (Score:2)
I have different times of my day when each of the different media is more convenient (than at other times.)
Each of the media formats has a variety of content and editorial bias. Within any given media, I select by content.
I think I would be stupid to throw out a good source based on their format. I select by content. That's what's important in a news medium. Content.
Newspapers are `push' technology (Score:2)
My newspaper informs me about lots of things that I would not know how to find on the web (and search engines are not a solution for news). It's the kind of stuff that I wouldn't actively go looking for, but will read if my eye catches it in the paper. Some of that can be very interesting and make me go look for more on the net, but it wouldn't happen this often without a newspaper.
In a way, this is similar to Usenet. Usenet will also feed me with stuff that I did not actively go looking for but that might still be interesting. That's also why I still use it. With newspapers the "effective push scope" is even broader that on a Usenet group dedicated to some (set of) topic(s), so I expect I will stop reading Usenet sooner that my newspaper.
An other reason to have newspapers is that computers still are too heavy and clumsy to cary about wherever a newspaper can go. Also, connecting to the net costs money. Newspapers also cost, but comparing the amount of verified information per buck that I get from my paper with the the amount of unverified stuff that I get from the web, the newspaper is cheaper. A lot cheaper actually, if I consider that on the web I'd need to spend a lot of time and money searching for the same amount of news first.
And last be not least: newspapers do not crash while I'm in the middle of an article. Netscape does that all the time on me.
--
How newspapers could add value. (Score:4)
Are you interested in knowing how you can compete with on-line news enterprises? A lot of this goes for TV and radio, too.
You know what I hate about newspapers? This is an election year, right? You know what would be useful to me? If someone itemized the participants in the race, and their claims, and declared positions on things, and then cross-checked that with their backgrounds, their voting records if applicable, campaign finances, former business partners, and so forth. I don't mean that glib, drop-in-the-bucket narrative you guys print now. I want charts. I want tables. Then print that every Sunday. Keep it up to date! Now, if a dozen of you did it, and you all competed in doing that - who'se more accurate, more impartial, who'se got more dirt... and so forth, then I'd race to the corner shop and buy several papers just to keep up.
I don't just idly want that information, I need it!
Newspapers have always made this claim that they're the guardians of democracy. Well, guardianship is relative, guys. Relatively speaking, compared to your (collectively) slipshod, partisan, "we're insiders and you're not" approach to informing the public about politics, there are half a dozen websites better than the best newspaper for election coverage.
This exposes a bigger issue. You guys focus group to death. Who are you, President Clinton wannabees? Do not write to the lowest common denominator! Write to a higher standard and let the public rise to it! The Lewinsky debacle couldn't have happened had the press not abbetted the sensationalism. As though journalists and editors live in a world where people are shocked by adultery? Not only does nobody care in their own lives, they assume the rich and powerful engage in it. Do you think we weren't all sick to death about hearing about Elian Gonzales within the first 48 hours? There are millions of homeless children, children with dead parents, custody battles... But someone, somewhere, assumes that we'll care about that one. Stupid.
But most of all - just cover the politics. Cover it like you're getting paid to do it. We don't want quips or anecdotes. Veiled party politics. Republican papers and democratic papers. We want to hear it every week like every candidate is a stranger to us. Most of them are!
Aren't you all sick of hearing about how 90% of Americans, when stopped on the street, don't know the first thing about John McCain, or his platform? Or Bill Bradley? Well, guess who'se fault it is, guys. There they are, the numbers screaming out at you that no one knows this stuff. That's the information people - society! - desperately needs - deliver it to our doorstep!
For a little consideration, a little less smug patronizing, and, if nothing else, thorough, systematic coverage of the election, I would gladly pay multiples of your subscription price.
Why I quit (Score:2)
One of the most frustrating things i had to deal with was they kept screwing with my favorite comlumn, Miss Manners. It was supposed to be in every Sunday and Thursday. Then they switched to every Wednesday and Thursday. Many, many times the appropriate section would declare that Miss Manners was running that day and it was not there. They tended to drop it in order to run ads. I called and complained, but they still did it and acted like I was out of line for asking about it!
It was also frustrating that the deliveries were fairly often late or the paper was wet. When I stopped the paper, I found that I rather liked not having the little nuisances gone from my life. I read comics online, I read news online, now available from sources as reliable as the printed paper, and all I really miss is the local ads.
Only when I can't get to a PC (Score:2)
Obviously I am not involved with my local community to any great extent, but even if I want to know what events are happening locally, my first resource is the Web. There are several local-news oriented websites and local tv and radio stations have web sites too. It is just more convenient than messing with dead trees.
URL fix (Score:2)
Alive, but their days are numbered (Score:2)
I don't read newspapers. I used to, when I was in a situation without 'Net access, but now that I'm connected most of the time, I never feel the need. The only content that's useful is the local stuff. I am not nearly as impressed with the writing quality as some other posters seem to be, maybe that only applies to a couple of papers. I also don't appreciate the constant tele-marketing, but I guess that's a personal thing.
As far as local content goes, its easy to see why the 'Net, so far, has failed in this arena. Until most (60+%) of the news-loving folks in your town have broadband, it's not gonna happen. When they do, a
/. only works as a news source because it has achieved a critical mass of posters. It works because of the huge number of eyeballs and the massive effort that can be aggregated with each person giving their $.02. I think this is a great style of news dissemination, sure some of it's innacurate, but that *always* gets pointed out by someone. You have to use sig/noise filters, but they work automagically after a while. If you can figure out how to make / work for a local news site, you can go ahead and quit your day job.
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Newspapers are souvenirs (Score:2)
To me, newspapers are just souvenirs. If something that I think is special happens, I'll buy a newspaper and store it away in my drawers or attic somewhere. Often I won't even bother reading past the front page. I'll have probably read the story a dozen times from a bunch of different sources already.
Even our local newspaper has a website [thisisglou...hire.co.uk] now. I just don't see the point in newspapers as news. Even the classifieds are online. Newspapers are ornaments.
Newspapers are like any original physical media- software, films, albums, whatever- I only buy the originals when I want to celebrate ownership of an original item. For instance, if there's some commercial software I really like (Paint Shop Pro [jasc.com] springs to mind), I'll buy the original as an ornament on my shelf (usually I actually install the warez version anyway). I buy original CDs of bands I really, really like, but tend to listen to the MP3s. I'll buy videos of films that really move me (Aliens, Bladerunner etc), even though I might prefer a different foreign/censored/director's cut that I've taped from somebody else.
And then there is the media which is mediocre, which is okay for a while, which does a job that doesn't need repeating. The stuff I wouldn't endorse if I were a celebrity, but hey, it fills a need, until something better comes along. One hit wonder bands. This morning's news on another dull day. Some software which crashes a lot or isn't really as flexible as I want it to be. An okay film that my wife might want to watch later. These are destined to spend their lifetime in my collection of MP3s, websites, warez and VHS tapes.
How to sell more newspapers? See Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age".
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Oh, to answer the question (Score:2)
But seriously, there are real advantages to computerized media that a printed product just can't compete with, no matter what you print or how you lay it out - that is the ability to search (something a computer is MUCH better at than an eyeball skimming over an index or the classifieds) and to customize what you see and what you don't. The ability to control what gets shoved in your face and what gets relegated to the back pages is a powerful, addictive drug that once your hooked you won't ever go back, by personal choice. Like Yahoo. Papers have always championed diversity and now they've got it and a single run just isn't going to meet the needs of everyone, or else the content just gets thinner and thinner from trying to appeal to a lowest common denominator.
The answer to get people to want to read your paper? Put it online - naturally the local 7832 printers unions isn't going to like it a bit but they can be retrained as McSE's to run the server farm you'll need to meed the demand and think of the advantages - lower printing costs - if your make a big mistake ("Dewey Wins!") you can easily change it dynamically and have everyone just hit 'reload' instead of having to print retractions in the next paper. And most importantly to the business, advertisers will now only have prominant positions at the head or side of columns, but paid links to their own sites for those wishing to find out more about their product.
For a time when the poorer folks will need a paper edition, but for many that even need a paper edition they'll have 'paper on demand' - that is find an article you want, hit 'print' and it prints out on a disposable pulp w/ soy ink or something and they can take it out on the porch for close scrutiny over coffee and scones or whatever.
Would I ever buy a newspaper again? (Score:2)
Why?
I know a lot of people say they find screens hard to read from. I don't: I read from a screen all day every day, it's my normal mode of working. By contrast, I don't find reading from broadsheet newspapers at all convenient - they're too big to handle comfortably in almost any normal reading situation.
And I strongly agree with Jon's comments both on the quality of technology news in newspapers and their understanding of what constitutes culture. I have never read a story about the Internet in a newspaper which didn't contain at least three fundamental misconceptions in the first paragraph; and I find the idea that 'culture' is represented only by the forms popularised by the Austro-Hungarian empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries risible in the extreme.
And, in Scotland at least, the tabloid-sized newspapers contain nothing but salacious gossip about vacuous 'celebrities' in whom I have no interest.
"The Record" - Katz you should know better (Score:2)
Basically, I've been to a lot of different places and seen local papers, and most of them are not very good and would best be used lining a bird cage. The Record, on the other hand, is one of the most consistently GREAT newspapers around. The columnists are top rate, the news is very unbiased, in-depth, and complete (local and national, with national stuff usually taking priority over the local without sacrificing the amount of either), it has MANY sections full of information, it's a good source of local and national ads as well as local classifieds, it's very easy to read, the Sports section is probably the best in the nation (a lot of the columnists do national work, some are regulars on ESPN.com), and in general it's pretty much a standard in Northern NJ. Not being there at the moment, I miss it. Every time I get a chance to go back up to NJ, I always make sure I get some copies of it.
Katz, you know about The Record, and you know that a lot of people read it, and you know that it's very useful and enjoyable and it does a very good job at what it's supposed to do. So why are you predicting the death of newspapers? Sure, a lot of the small-town ones are getting trampled by what's available on the Internet daily, but I think a newspaper like The Record ain't going anywhere anytime soon. I think that there is room for quality newspapers in a world dominated by the Internet, even if just because we're not at the point where EVERYONE can get their Internet news up-to-date in the subway, at the breakfast table, or on the toilet yet.
The right tool for the job.... (Score:2)
Newspapers can survive, even (especially!!!!!) local papers, but only if they eschew oldthink...
Your Working Boy,
What would I want from a newspaper? (Score:2)
Better writing than I would find on the Web.
Things that interest me, in a general sense- although it might seem rather specialized.
I don't get any newspapers. I'd be somewhat more likely to get them if I had a wood-stove and had a use for burning them afterwards. I _do_ get some publications, though, and this tells you something about what I'd want from a newspaper. I get 'em from Baker's or a local bookstore, in one case by subscription.
I get MacAddict by subscription based on their habit of providing a CD-Rom with large numbers of recent programs and demos and things- it's like a sort of miniature MacOS Freshmeat or something. This is farthest from what a newspaper would need to be for me to buy it. I get Cinefex when it comes to the bookstore- this is a quarterly movie special effects journal that is extremely in touch with its industry and teaches me many things and gives me ideas. I get various ultralight and homebuilt-airplane magazines at Baker's (an office supplies store), because they're fun to read- I tend to scan them to see if there's any particular article appealing enough that I'd want to have the magazine around indefinitely.
In all of these cases (least so for MacAddict!) I am also interested in access to the advertisements- this is because on the one hand pro cinema effects technology, and on the other ultralight aircraft equipment, isn't a thing I see in daily life, or locally. (computer hype is everywhere and I'd be happier if MacAddict didn't even run advertisements :) )
So, logically, the way to sell printed paper to me is to deal with an area I want to know about, but can't get local access to- to deal with it expertly, knowing more than I do and knowing who else to interview and publish and write about- and to put me in touch with an entire community including pundits who know more than I do and advertisers selling specialised products that I don't ever see anywhere else. Do all that and I buy the printed paper- it's that simple. I don't say it's _easy_, but it's not particularly mysterious.
One interesting side note is that to do this, you positively have to take an interest in the subject matter to the point of being passionate about it. There's no room at all for token coverage and having your real focus be getting money from me. If you can't out-geek me in the area I want to hear about, then I'll tend to see through that right away and drop you like a hot rock. Whatever the common business wisdom is these days, if you want to sell a newspaper or magazine or journal, sincerity isn't just some selling point: it's the main reason for anybody to be listening to you. Who the hell would listen to somebody who didn't really care what they were talking about as long as they sold ad space?
my news (Score:2)
- USA today online (for the worldly part of me)
- Slashdot (for the dork in me)
- The Daily Show on comedy central (hits all the major topics, and I nearly bust a gut watching)
Honestly, what else do you need on a daily basis? Every major story appears in one of the above, and USA today/slashdot will provide additional links.
Why should I read the newspaper everyday and be hit with a front page of murders, killings, drugs, death, and politics and other sensationalism, when I can turn on the Daily Show, get the same basic info and laugh myself silly in the process?
"You want to kiss the sky? Better learn how to kneel." - U2
a reporter turned programmer's perspective (Score:2)
General observations about papers:
A Big thing is what Jon mentioned, they still act as if they are in the breaking news bussiness. More analysis, etc. pieces needed, but they are scary for publishers because it blurs the news/opinion line.
This leads to the Really Big Point. Newspapers in particular have been led down a path of "objectivity" in the U.S. mostly because of the constant attacks from the right for "bias." As a result, "objectivity" in U.S. papers has led to what I call "quote counting". Our political reporter at the paper I worked for (who covered state legislature as well), always made sure to present both (i.e., Dem & GOP) sides to an issues, often to the point of counting the number of quotes he gave each side. If a Dem called him with a "story", he called a Republican rep and "got both sides".
What's wrong with that? Well, too often reporters don't do the obvious which is to say "that's crap!". The reason they don't is alluded to above. If a Dem proposes a bill and the reporter does a lengthy investigation, talks with experts, files Freedom of Information requests, etc, all to (ultimately) write a piece that says "this is probably not a good idea is you look at all the facts", they get reamed even if they have a Republican quoted many times in favor of the idea. They get reamed by the GOP, they get reamed by the publisher, etc. Reverse the parties? Doesn't matter (I know the right will hate that). I could take the exact same political story to my rabid GOP booster neighbor and to my left-wing mother and BOTH OF THEM WOULD SAY IT WAS BIASED!
Anyway, so the reporter is not ALLOWED to share the context of the story with the reader. This is what NPR does, for instance, that makes it so good. One reason, I think, is that it is easier for a reporter to use their voice to make a point about whether they believe a person is telling the truth.
Anyway, I've gone on and on here. I'll wrap up with this summary: Papers fall into one of four categories these days:
1. Big city dailies. These are sometimes locally owned, mostly chain. All mass and no substance for the most part. The above, fully research analysis piece would probably get sent back for several rewrites, but published. Unfortunately, it would be buried well in the back and very few people would see it. Note: In a family-owned paper, it would only get published if it jibed with the publisher's political beliefs.
2: Medium size papers, locally owned. The above article would not get published. Locally owned small papers can't afford to piss off ANYONE. They are doing too poorly financially and can't lose advertising revenue. Almost all businessmen of any stature in a medium to small town are active politically (on both sides). They buy the ads. Also, sometimes the publisher's family is split politically, which makes in even worse. The paper I worked at, for instance, could not publish ANY stories on Abortion, because the brothers were split on the issue. POOF! A major issue in America is never mentioned. Isn't the news fun?
3: Medium to small papers, chain owned. The above article would never get written because they would never have someone on staff to do it. Chains cut paper staff to the bone and salaries too. Maybe a talented person is at the paper, but chances are they do a zillion things besides reporting and don't have weeks to spend on a story like that.
4: Alternative weeklies, etc.: The above story would get written if it jibed with the publishers political beliefs, but readership (as opposed to circulation) at these papers is tiny. Very few would read it, and many would reject it's conclusions because the paper is "biased"
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Death of Paper (Score:2)
I'd be more than happy to share some of my reading habits with you.
Newspapers have never quite tickled my fancy, I've always had a hard time to tackle an overly large and totally untame sheet of paper. The times I do read something news worthy would be over a person's shoulder or when it appears in a more tame form (ie. cut into pieces).
On the average, being a geek, I'm a real busy person and would give almost nothing to the major newspapers out there (but I'v seen the new Onion), politics and gossip just does not delight me. The only time you do see me get over my boredom and read something in default format would be to turn the newspaper on it's back, and explor the last few pages in the hope of finding something comical to entertain.
The same goes for traditional books. I am an avid reader, but over the last few years, I've been slacking very badly (since it's just not economically possible to read a book anymore nowdays). All sorts of constraints apply when reading a book.
My solutions arrived in the form a small electornic device (which I immediatly dubbed 'garo' -- a long lost feline friend). This device was a PalmOS based Handspring [handspring.com] Visor Delux, with 8mb ram and the ability to upgrade using an unique hardware modular slot (even though it's flash is not upgradeable).
After having exhausted my batters in less than a week (of continuous play with the Visor), I decided to explore the waste expances of software [palmgear.com] available for PalmOS. I installed utility after utility, getting delighted with the slightest twist of a coding wizard (and yes the little mirror program that turned your palm screen black did send giggles up my spine and entertain a whole load of female friends).
One of the delightfully free software that was buzzed down my USB connection into my Visor was AvantGo [avantgo.com]. Which was a mixture of channel based online newsfeeds and other resources (even
I take my visor everwhere, it fits snuggly in my pocket and feels very conforatble in my hand. All channels are updated at least once a day. I usually update early morning and in the evenining. News is read where I happen to be
Now that takes care of news.. What about books?! It took me over a month to get into books on my Visor and man.. Now I'm reading almost 2 books a week after that. My fav doc reader would undoubtably be Bill Clagett's CSpotRun [32768.com], A GPLed reader that is undoubtably the king of all Doc Readers out there. It has the ability to make the fonts closer, to turn the text into every single position known on the pilot (read from the sides or upside down?), autoscroll, drag scroll, scroll using the pageup-pagedown (fun!), and anything you could contribute! Ebooks are fun! Most books from the gutenberg project have been converted into ebooks over at MemoWare [memoware.com] also you could OCR any book you own and convert it into doc format using the linux doctoolkit [linuxbox.com]. Others check here [memoware.com]. I have read War and Peace (over 1/2 million words) by Tolstoy (free on tolstoy.org [tolstoy.org]), re-read Most books from William Gibson, Douglas Adams, Arthur C. Clarke and various other entities. I've also had the pleasure of reading classics such as ShakesSpeare, SunTzu, Tolkein, Plato, Confucious and many others right on my PDA.
Overall, the handheld computer with it's extreemly large memory (yes books in electornic format are tiny!) has been the only reason why I've gone back and read so many books (not to mention carry around so many techical notes and moste of the relevant HOWTO pages). I would recommend a handheld PDA to anyone who reads it and encorage them to read electornic Newspapers and e-books on a regualar basis.
Enjoy!
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Re:What I hate about newspapers (Score:2)
PS: I'm sort of serious, and this definitely *is* on topic. Crash resistance is one of the major advantages that newspapers have over the average PC.
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Re:Death of Paper (Score:2)
The book I got (probably from gutenberg project and not tolstoy.org) was partitioned into 9 books which were easy to read. Tolstoy.org has the book in one huge lump of txt file
Enjoy.
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why would I? (Score:2)
Even for historical purposes, there are much better searchable archives online. Physical newspapers aren't searchable.
Why would I want someone's opinions of whom I don't know, mired in an outdated technology infecting the story? This is exactly why don't watch local news on TV. KEEP YOUR OPINIONS TO YOURSELF. Just the facts, ma'am.
Why would I want to get black ink all over my hands and clothes?
Why would I pay 100% of the cost for something that I would be interested in 5% of? A physical newspaper has too much information, more than want to know, or worse yet, doesn't have what I want to read about because it didn't fit into their projected demographic.
Newspapers use unfair labor practices (Detroit News and Free Press for example).
It isn't electronic. I can't easily copy/paste articles into emails, notes or documents on my computer.
a Denverite's $.02 (Score:2)
Here in Colorado, we have three major papers:
The Rocky Mountain News
The Denver Post
The Onion
No, I'm not joking. The Onion has a HUGE circulation. You KNOW you've heard of it. Hell, you probably read it. It's Coloradan, baby. Boo-yah.
In a way, The Onion is the best of the three. Sure, it doesn't provide any actual news (aside from concert listings and music/movie/book reviews), but it puts more humor in one place than any website I've ever visited, and for free to boot. But The Onion is also conscious of the web, so you can read the issue from one or two weeks ago online (The website also allows Coloradans to read their Columbine spoof, which was edited out of our region's hardcopy papers.). There's nothing like picking up an Onion at one of the campus newsstands to read on the bus ride home
Anyway, considering the "real papers". For me, the Post basically flunks out on general principle, since it's a two-fold paper, meaning it's well over 4 square feet when unfolded, making it basically impossible to read. And if that weren't enough, it's articles tend to be less articulate, about less important issues, and of a generally lower quality. But it does carry Dilbert
The News, OTOH, is a one-fold paper, has clearly written articles on topics of importance, and carries Garfield, Peanuts, Robotman, and Shoe.
But no one really cares about that. The point is the *function* of the paper. From my POV, papers are the best source of local news. If I want to get local news from TV, I have to:
1. sit through commercials
2. sit through sports
3. sit through human interest stories
4. sit through the barrage of violent crime reports
Plus more crap that doesn't come readily to mind, I'm sure. And I can only get it at 4, 5, 9, and 10 o'clock. What a bunch of suck. The paper I can read anytime I want. I can ignore the ads and the lame stories. Plus there's the classifieds. No online job search lists as many jobs as the paper. All the used car search engines put together don't total a tenth of the auto listings. And eBay is the only even marginal substitute (that I know of) for the misc stuff, like musical instruments, pool tables, yadda yadda yadda.
Anyway, if I had a point, it's forgotten. Take it or leave it
MoNsTeR
Why Read a Newspaper? (Score:2)
1. Newspapers usually devote more than 30 seconds to important stories and the sound-bite from the TV broadcast occupies one or two lines from a 100-line column.
2. Newspapers generally stand as responsible for what they say and are genuinely embarrased when they mis-state the truth. Newsprint may be temporary but it is permanent enough to keep them honest.
3. If it is an important and controversial topic I tend to read the newspaper for the truth. Newspaper stories generally segregate fact from opinion with care and that makes them particularly valuable.
4. Newspapers keep editorials and content separate.
5. Reading the entire content of the TV news takes considerably less than 30 minutes -- particularly if you simply read the first paragraph of the story and go on as the TV news people usually do.
Writers try hard to cover stories using a vocabulary that an eighth grader can comprehend. That is not always easy and is particularly difficult when the topic is science or technology. -- Have you ever tried to explain what you do to an eighth grader with a good general education? I'll bet Linux is not a major topic in his life and news of computers is not particularly exciting.
As a group /. readers are considerably more educated than the general population; particularly in science and technology. To expect those topics to be dealt with in a newspaper and satisfy us is unreasonable. Sometimes I suspect that newspapers stay away from topics they can't adequately explain since when they fail the truth is sacrificed.
I truly hope that newspapers succeed in getting their content onto the web and survive as a business. Should they fall silent the population will have lost their primary (IMHO) source of information.
Re:Of course I still read the newspaper. (Score:2)
Metro Population 216,478,090
Non Metro Population 53,820,434
So there is only a market of 53 million people for the papers that you are talking about. Katz is completely correct in assuming that most of the papers are delivered to metro areas and read by metro citizens. It is nearly inarguable that local papers will not die in the next 20 years. But what about the larger, more "wired" metro populations? Do they seriously have a need for paper based news? It is a very interesting question.
I personally find myself much better informed by not reading the paper and using that time to read news websites. That, coupled with the complete misrepresentation by the media on technology issues, makes paper based news just hard to handle. However, the local collage news paper (U of MN Daily) is filled with interesting local news and events that I care about. But I only read that because it is free. *grin*
In short, I think that papers will definately live on in the local scene. Most likely, they will be religated there as more and more people get online and have less and less need for world news. Perhaps there will be a second wind in subscribership when they only report local issues and news. I myself would sign up for such a paper. In the end, time will tell.
Crulx
Re:Local news and non-wired people (Score:2)
They could sub-contract the local news writers to do the stories that would be put instantly on the online version.
It's the TV newsmedia that is dead (Score:2)
They bally about the most sensationalistic news that have no real impact on a person and don't even give mention of truely important things. So much so, that I don't even watch any television news.
The Internet fulfills what TV newsmedia used to be best at: providing instantaneous coverage of important news events. Newspapers, while not the most immediate news source, provide a more indepth and better researched look at things. They are also not as sensationalistic.
Consequently, regarding what you said that a frontpage story about McCain beating out Bush, I had not heard about that. However, even if I had, I appreciate the much more indepth look that is in the newspapers rather than the cursory reporting done by the television newsmedia.
The one thing that I would appreciate much more in the newspapers is more technology coverage. I also find that the minimal coverage found in most newspapers is not very well researched with glaring inaccuracies. While I appreciate the increased technology coverage found in my local newspaper, The Boston Globe, I find that it is still not enough.
I still find it odd that there is so much more coverage about a small thing half a world away than there is about some important thing related to technology.
Chris Hagar
Re:Newspapers - Crimes/Weddings (Score:2)
This is truer than I'd like it to be - two of the three newspapesr I've purchased in the last year I snagged because of the crimes reported therein. Where else can you read about seventeen-year-olds snagging credit card numbers out of "chat rooms", using them to buy ten-plus grand worth of merchandise from Amazon, and getting stung by seven cops after they let their entire class know about the operation?
Even that coverage is pathetic, though. The opening line from the cc-fraud story: When you build a high-tech world, you open yourself up to high-tech crime...
Comix, local sports, and litter pan liners! (Score:2)
Eric
My local paper (Score:2)
I do not get it at the newstand every day, but practically every day, and the reason I do so is primarily for the local news section and the joy of reading the OP/ED section to see what the local people have to say about things.
There are in fact about 5 regulars who write editorials that I look for every time I open that section. They tend to be quite entertaining if not insane.
Plus the rantings of our own local psycho mayor make for an interesting read.
Where do I go for other news?
Online I go to the NY Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today.
The real question here might be whether or not printed newspapers will exist in 10 or 15 years.
Will they? Who knows, but probably not.
I for one would enjoy having all of my "newspaper" choices delivered to my huge LCD flatpanels located in every room of my home via an incredibly fast net connection, and we all know it's coming.
Will my older relatives enjoy this? No, certainly not, and they'll continue buying regular papers until the day they die.
But I suspect the fast-paced technology world will make paper "newspapers" obsolete, and they'd all better prepare for that day.
Internet news not yet up to speed (Score:2)
CNN.com is basicly the best news source I have found and it is simply skimming the headlines.
I get my local news from www.hotcoco.com not much more than a reprint of a local newspaper.. and I read the newspaper that runs it... Contra Costa Times...
It will be a while before Internet news can really replace newspapers... It has the potental for depth of any given subject.. but that depth is unexplored.
On the other hand... I don't watch TV anymore...
TV news dose have the advantage of bringing the news quicker... The Internet can do this as well but I don't see it happening yet...
It would be nice to see some rapid and indepth reporting done on the Internet... it can be done... a Quicky rapid.. and maybe at the end of the day a detailed indepth...
The news media outlets know what we want they simply need to learn how to deliver it...
Slashdot is a good example of one delivery system... I saw a nice Java applet that dose a good job (Ug Java is evil... puke Java evil.. ok enough of that) such news tickers offer headlines... offering thies to websites is a good idea....
Also <a href="http://slashdot.org/code.shtml">Slashdot</a
As everyone discovers how to use the Internet for news delivery they will expand the covrage of the news available. As they cover more users they'll offer more content.
Of course the talkback feature on Slashdot is a huge hit and a plus for ANY news agentcy... Forget media bies.... When people can post replys directly to any given news story Media bies is no longer an issue.. instead of one leading bies the readers end up being exposed to every posable bies under the sun... So instead of zero bies (a very hard mesure to achive with out slicing valuable information) you get EVERY bies.. No one agenda takes over... and the masses are informmed
Re:One more value add (Score:2)
Parliamentary prodeedings in New South Wales are available at the Hansard [nsw.gov.au] page.
That sort of thing seems more like a web function to me - frankly, square-inch for inch, news pages are more expensive than web space. If you want full text dumps, the web would be the place to put them (provided you could pay someone to transcribe them...).
Myself, if I'm looking for raw info on news, I go to the web, if I want commentary, I go to the papers. I don't think this is an intrinsic feature of the web, but whenever I'm looking for information on the web, the sheer volume of irrelevancy/inanity overcomes me.