Yes, to a point. (Score 1)

Rather then tell newspapers what they should do, I'd like them to know what *I* do, or rather did. There will always be a place for newspapers, but I can see why it would be difficult for them to survive in today's digital age. Perhaps once a month I'll go to the newstand and pick up a Sunday paper and go over it during a long breakfast. This is a weekend pleasure, usually while hung-over, that is becomming more and more difficult to come by. Ultimatly, however, I simply don't have time for a plain paper version of a newspaper. I do, however, have a love of keeping up with the days events. Typically, this involves listining to public radio in the car. I've tried television news, but have found the local news seems to harp on schlock, while national cable news networks spend too much time on issues I'm not concerened with. The news and features on NPR seem to fit most of my wants, but compleatly ignore any local issues. Enter the newspaper. I've lived in several places around the United States, and have found that there are hudge differences in the quality and content of newspapers. If you get a good one, you get both national and local news in an intellegent, easy to read fashion. If you get a bad one (and, yes, most of them are bad), you get the same sort of pointless drivel you can find on the local newscast on television. A few years ago, it startled me that so many newspapers were investing so much in the web. They approached the internet with a philosophy that seemed to say "We don't know why we are here, but were going to be here". At best I assumed they figured "We didn't do much with radio, or television, and they took away readers. We are not going to let that happen again". When I lived in Los Angeles, I would spend each morning before work at the latimes.com and the cnn.com web site. I enjoyed the LA Times site. Now that I live in Phoenix, the local paper's website is lacking (much like the paper itself). I still have an interest in local news, but I am simply unwilling to point my browser to a substandard newssource. What I have found, now, is that I get almost all of my online news from web sites that link to other web sites. Slashdot is a good place for me to start. fark.com and tomshardware.com are others. I'll go to a web site that I think would have links to other news sites that I might find interesting. It is just more effecient that way. If my local newspaper was interested in keeping me reading it, it has do a few things: 1. Become credible. Write compelling articles with journelistic integrity. When a regional Pittsburgh paper wrote a few years ago that there *is* Alien space craft behind the comet hale-bop, I put down the paper and laughed. If the New York Times printed that story, I'd be concerened. The difference was in the credibility of the two. 2. Write what people need to know. We get examples of this now in spades with the elections. Yes, I do want to know who is winning the primary elections, but day after day of the soap opera that goes on...I neither need or want to know about that. 3. Be easy to read. Have important national and local stories on the frount page. Don't run a giant picture and a human interest story on page one and make me hunt for any of the meat.