Is it The End Of Newspapers?

[scotrace]

This chart is rather sobering.

Here's the story.

Do you subscribe to a daily paper? I'm afraid I cancelled mine three years back. Not due to any anti-print bias, but because the local paper seemed bent on wrecking lives, rather than reporting news.

 

[Lady Day]

I think your last sentence just summed up a general feel on papers. Why subscribe, so many articles are AP or 'features' and are all the same. Online you can find info bent on however you think OR you can find more level commentary on anything and then form an opinion on things.

I visit about 4 news site on the same topic and I get a nice well rounded discussion on it. Choice, its awesome.

LD

 

[Feraud]

We cancelled The New York Times and only have the Wall Street Journal delivered. The decision to cancel was based on delivery service and reading time. I have less time than I want for newspapers but do a fair amount of news reading online.

 

[LizzieMaine]

One more reason why I wish I had chosen any profession in the world but journalism when I was 20. No matter how highly-vaunted the "blogosphere/citizen journalism" thing may be, it's no substitute for the responsibility and accountability that goes along with the printed page, and I for one will keep buying papers until there's none left to buy.

Besides, my cat would much rather spread out across a newspaper than a computer keyboard. Much more comfortable.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

We subscribe to the WSJ and use it as guinea pig cage liner.

 

[dhermann1]

My girlfriend takes the WSJ, and I must say, I like the articles and features better than the Times. As far as the future is concerned, as Lewis Mumford once said, trend is not destiny. Papers will continue to decline, but I don't think they'll go away.
I think the trend to build new cities that have a real urban feel is a good sign. Newspapers are an urban thing. It's great to sit in a cafe with your coffee and croissant and read the paper. Or sit on the bus or subway and read it. They go together, like peanut butter and jelly.

 

[Maj.Nick Danger]

I only buy an occasional Sunday paper to read the want ads, my horoscope, and the color comics. Also makes good packing material when shipping items sold online, and is indispensable as a protective covering on floors and furniture for painting projects. I will also buy any paper that features articles or ads about the group of artists and gallery projects I am involved with, to have a record of our fame and fortune for posterity.

 

[Gary Crumrine]

We take the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, whose contents are (as Wm. Buckley once wrote on another matter) daily exfoliated from the wings of angels. Lesser newspapers reflect the wishes of hopeful young things who have never made a payroll.

 

[Julian]

I think the huge national newspapers lilke the New York Times and the WSJ need to accept that they are no longer the place people go for news. By the time a paper gets an edition out with a big headline, that same story is old news on the internet.

But as the larger papers die off, I think local and regional papers will actually do better. I think we may be headed back to a time when each town is going to have it's own "small town paper."

For the big stories, for disasters and emergencies, people are going to get their news online because it's fast and immediate and constantly updated.

But for sitting down with a cup of coffee and seeing what events are going on around town, and what movies are showing, people will still want to have a "local neighborhood" paper.

I think this may be a good thing.

 

[Paisley]

I get the WSJ online. It's much cheaper than the print version, and it's great for financial research.

I get the Denver Post for the TV guide and coupons. The rest of the paper is used as mulch. Trying to read the Post after the WSJ is like trying to watch Wynona Rider after Bette Davis.

 

[52Styleline]

Our local paper is getting so skimpy it often seems to hardly be there and this is the Capital of the State. I think the demise of the local sheet began when it shifted from an evening paper to a morning publication. The change was made to satisfy the advertisers who wanted their pitches to hit the shopper as he or she left home for the day, but that didn't seem to work and now the advertisers have deserted the paper. And as far as a reader goes, because of its early publication..it is nothing but old news. A few years ago, nearly everyone in town took the local paper. Now few do. I read it at work and that barely takes five minutes.

 

[panamag8or]

One more reason why I wish I had chosen any profession in the world but journalism when I was 20. No matter how highly-vaunted the "blogosphere/citizen journalism" thing may be, it's no substitute for the responsibility and accountability that goes along with the printed page, and I for one will keep buying papers until there's none left to buy.

Besides, my cat would much rather spread out across a newspaper than a computer keyboard. Much more comfortable.

I hear 'ya about a journalism path, but at least it holds better prospects than broadcasting.

Oh, my cat isn't picky... paper, keyboard, it's all the same to her.lol

 

[Diamondback]

No matter how highly-vaunted the "blogosphere/citizen journalism" thing may be, it's no substitute for the responsibility and accountability that goes along with the printed page, and I for one will keep buying papers until there's none left to buy.

Miss Lizzie, with all due respect, and one ex-journalist to another, have you seen some of the stuff on the NYTimes headlines and editorial-page lately? Responsibility and accountability indeed... *snort*

Think last time I looked at a Times article, I kept score and spotted every single way to skew an article we covered in Journalism 101 and a few more that haven't made it to formal classification yet.

Again, this is not to pick a fight, just another ex-journalist's look at the field (and why that "ex-" prefix is there, in my case).

 

[Mid-fogey]

I guess...

...it doesn't surprise me. Every quarter when we get the bill for our small, local paper I wonder if I should pay it or cancel it.

It's not a bad little paper. They cover the archaeological work at Jamestown, and I'm not sure how I'd ever know any local news without them.

 

[jamespowers]

Newspaper is wonderful. I line my garbage can with it.
Seriously newspaper is dead. The Internet was its death knell. Only folks who don't use computers read newspapers.
The choice out there has completely negated the bias of the local newspapers.

 

[K.D. Lightner]

My mother subscribes to the Des Moines Register, has read it all her life. I have gotten used to reading it every morning, good for local news and events, obituaries (how else would I know who has died?), and I like the movie review and funnies.

But, yes, I spend a lot more time on the net than I do reading newspapers, magazines and journals combined. The one exception: I like to read books. Once a friend of mine got me a subscription the the NY Times Book Review. That was it, just the book review. I loved it.

For years I indexed medical journals, they just cancelled the last journal I was doing for them. Between outsourcing to save money (everything faster/better/cheaper -- hard to pull off) and more and more journals going online, I think there is a death knell in that industry, too.

Glad I got out of publishing and went into government. I got out after 18 years with a pension. That would not have happened to me in publishing.

karol

 

[Lincsong]

The whole thing is a comedy.

 

[Phil]

Thorugh my day I'll end up reading
- Iowa State Daily
- USA Today
- The Des Moines Register
- The New Yourk Times

 

[Twitch]

Been subscribing to Long Beach paper since the 60s. Problem I find with a lot of the online "news" is that is is simply very poorly written. I see stuff that people on forums point to and find compositions that are often pure speculation with no substantial core facts, just some schlub's perspective of an event who wishes to jaundice you into seeing what his warped mind extruded from it.

No, newspaper articles aren't perfect but the local writers are actually far better to these halfazzed AP, Reuters and such.

 

[Miss_Bella_Hell]

I subscribe to the paper WSJ - good student rates. I think that as long as there are long train commutes there will be someone reading the paper - it's when I read mine.