Slashdot Mirror
Would You Ever Read A Newspaper Again?
Are newspapers over? Is there anything papers can do that would get you to buy them and read them every day? Is there any reason to preserve their form and function, any vital purpose they serve?
At this moment in media history, newspapers have never been more pressed to define themselves, or done a worse job.
All over the information spectrum, media audiences are fragmented, drawn to the timeliness, convenience and immediacy of cable news, and the Net and the Web.
Slow to grasp the implications of emerging information technologies like radio, TV, cable, then the Net and Web, papers have been asking themselves more or less the same questions for half a century now: what should we be? What do people want of us? And newspaper readers have been asking the inverse: do we need papers anymore? Is there anything in them for us?
One thing is obvious: the answer doesn't really lie in the focus groups and marketing sessions that have become a feature of newspaper industry planning. Nor does it lie in the proliferation of mostly boring online versions newspapers that, with few exceptions (the Wall Street Journal, the Minneapolis Tribune, the San Jose Mercury News, USA Today, the Boston Globe), divert resources, compete with their own hard-copy versions and make little money, at least so far.
The challenge for newspapers is the same one it's been for nearly a half century. It isn't technological. It's creative. They don't tell us things we don't know. They don't offer us good writing or strong opinion. They don't even have good comics any more. And their coverage of technology generally sucks. And profoundly so.
In the midst of the greatest information revolution in human history, it's hard to point to a single newspaper that has radically altered it's mission, content and appearance to keep up with the Information Revolution and the spread of digital information.
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.
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.
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.
Technology, perhaps the central social issue of our times - and without a doubt the biggest ongoing story in America and much of the world -- is spawning a host of significant issues of relevance to almost everyone: genetics, artificial intelligence, open source and free software (and social) movements, patent, copyright and intellectual content questions, nano-technology, super-computing, the runaway rise of the Net, the Web, and e-commerce.
How many of these stories make their way to the front pages of newspapers? Few, and then rarely. Newspapers are still mired in anti-deluvian and phobic notions about technology - is Johnny getting onto the Playboy website, is it safe to use your credit card online, are predators waiting to stalk your kids, are hackers waiting to invade your website, does the Net promote loneliness and isolation?
Newspapers are the scolds of the Digital Age, shrieking and clucking about a changing world (the Net, the Web, movies, TV shows, rap, hip-hop, kids today) like Temperance Ladies wandering into a bar.
The press will obsess on the semen on Monica Lewinsky's dress, but still won't take technology seriously. Newspapers still don't recognize that that the Net isn't a sex story or a business or cracking story, but increasing, the biggest story of our time.
In "Code," Lawrence Lessing of Harvard writes about the evolution of new laws in cyberspace. In "Hamlet On the Holodeck," Janet Murray of MIT writes about the emergence of new kinds of culture - gaming, MUD's, hypertext -- among the gifted geeks and nerds on the Internet. 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.
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.
Few newspaper readers have even heard about these new kinds of culture. No wonder kids - especially geek and nerd kids -- have abandoned papers in droves.
This timidity and lack of risk-taking is astounding, especially for an industry that doesn't let a day go by without lamenting it's declining place in the world, and wondering what on earth it should do to compete with CNN'ism, Salon, and a plethora of other competitors.
It's hard to know what might work for papers, since there is no paper that has tried anything that could even remotely be described as radical change.
Is it too late? Do any of you read newspapers? Do you see a future for them? Is there anything they could do that would make you want to subscribe to and read them, either in hard copy or online form?
What do you think?:
I haven't had a subscription to a paper in years. It's just so much easier to get the news off the web. It seems like such a waste to have so much paper around.
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.
http://www.logient.com
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.
...Upgrade now to Schrodingers Dog...
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."
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
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.
"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
pronoblem
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.
BilldaCat
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.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
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.
-
Just because it works, doesn't mean it isn't broken.
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.
-- Ever notice that fast-burning fuse looks exactly the same as slow-burning fuse? I didn't... (Edgar Montrose)
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.
I still read and enjoy newspapers
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)
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.
Dirt doesn't need luck.
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
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
Freedom: "I won't!"
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.)
Well, that's my 47.2 cents worth.
If it works in theory, try something else in practice.
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.
Eric Christian Berg
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.
THAT WHICH DOES NOT KILL ME POSTPONES THE INEVITABLE.
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 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
This is the first time I have been able to read slashdot since 6pm yesterday. What happened? I was getting a 500 server error at index.pl, and that's when I could connect at all. index.shtml was boring...
Anyway, I would read a paper if it was online... oh wait! I already do! www.nytimes.com. Paper has its place (eg, reading material for the bathroom; or stuff to read while dining in the cafeteria), but paper is too expensive, especially when I only read one or two articles. It's also a real waste of paper.
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.
Transcript show: self sigs atRandom.
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 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.
Unix: Where
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!
One of these days/I'm going to cut you into little pieces.
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"...
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
nuff said.
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.
"All the darkness in the world can not quench the light of one small candle."
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.
Deleted
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.
...has a section where you can read the want-ads online. That's the only relationship that I have with them.
I do what the voices on my console tell me to do.
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.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
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.
I wrote parts of this stuff
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.
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
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.
Save a tree. Don't buy a newspaper today.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
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, the Washington Post, and the Spiegel. 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.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
I think it's fairly dangerous to look to slashdot to answer questions regarding newspapers. slashdot has an extremely narrow focus...(Rob called micro-branding I think). Newspapers, on the other hand (should) be focused on nearly everyone. They're very different markets...sort of like comparing newspapers to magazines. That said, I haven't seen a really good example of a type of 'newspaper' on the web. The closest is those stupid 'portal' sites that try to offer everything and anything.
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.
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.
I have written a truly remarkable operating system which this sig is too small to contain.
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 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. = )
Why does it come as no surprise to me that Slashdot's favorite Christian-basher, Jon Katz, is out in full force again? The same writer who was come out and said that he believes that religion should play "no role" in almost any part of public life again turns his attack dogs loose on those of us who have and profess faith in Christ. The persecution of Christians online has reached staggering proportions, thanks in no small part to writers like Katz and the web sites who have unfortunately decided to give these writers their own personal soapbox. I, for one, have had it. Katz, this article was the last straw. I will no longer read your articles, and for that matter, I will no longer peruse Slashdot itself.
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...
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
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 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
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.
Yours,
AEH
Why pay for a newspaper we can get free online, we can get articles from tons of different sites and put them together giving us more than one source could possibly do. Out with print!
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.
I get most of my news online, however I do still read papers. To survive, print media needs to focus on its particular strengths, and consider itself a niche provider, rather than the single grand source of all information (which it was 100 years ago). My suggestions are to really focus on local news and do national and international news more deeply. Not being up-to-the minute current can give a newspaper the advantage of being able to take a broader perspective (as opposed to the "thought bites" you get from abcnews.com). Also consider the unique advantages of paper. While I do not get home delivery, I often buy a paper for something to read during daily spare moments (waiting for my car's oil change, during lunch, etc.) Consider making newpapers more available in these venues. Every laundromat should have a newspaper machine! Also make the physical size a bit more manageable -- it should be smaller than the current tabloid standard, ideally so I can flip through it while on the stairmaster at the gym.
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 don't watch the news, i don't read papers.. if it's not on slashdot, i don't know about it."
hessiebell
---
---
"I can't send an email! Is the Internet full?"
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
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).
That's my opinion, at least.
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.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
...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.
Does this
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.
support gun control: take guns from cops
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.
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
TRUTH!
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
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
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 ) 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.)
However, I find the local "alternative" weekly City Paper 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."
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Let me explain why...
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".
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
I can't believe how over-the-top hyper-critical and negative you are about this Katz dude. I mean, come on, he posts some thoughts about newspapers in the digital age and tries to get discussion going, and you all just jump on him. If you hate the guy that much or you don't care about newspapers, then why even read what he wrote in the first place? I was hoping to find some intelligent replies, and there were a few, but I just got sick of wading through all the Junior High level comments about how Jon Katz sucks and he can't write and blah blah blah... Grow up already!
I used to be EXTREMELY Christian but have since abandoned any faith because there is no God. What's wrong with attacking people who are wrong?
Dirt doesn't need luck.
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.
Mr. Katz You ignore serveral issues in your latest missive re: the future of newspapers. LET ME COVER SOME POINTS: * New media does not kill old media. Radio did not kill the papers, or the book; nor did movies or television. TV did not killthe radio. The web won't kill newspapers, TV or radio. It wont happen. Period. * Newspapers represent an amazing value for the consumer. Much cheaper cost per bit than CD, etc. A newspaper hold a tremndous value in terms of cost per bit. * Newspapers are portable and READABLE. I spend alot of time (ok-all day and night) in front of a CRT and if I need to do any real long or serious reading I PRINT. It's easier on the eyes and the back. Ever try to take that palm pilot on a bus or plane and REALLY read it? Plus they dont make you close your paper on takeoff... The real question is not the death of newspapers but the role of newspapers, and it is a worthwile thing to consider. For a long time now the majority of people have been getting their news from sources other than the paper (although the wide majority get it from television and not the web). The web is cleatrly the best way to get the LATEST news. My guess is that newspapers will rely on the following things to redefine themselves: * Their credibility. Print have a long history and a tradition of ethical conduct (of course not always followed). When you ask "who do you trust?" The answer is rarely the web. * Core consituancy: By the nature the web is global and that often gives websites a very broad outlook. By nature newspapers are local. Local content will be the king for newspapers. * "Muckraking" and editorials: Newspapers have staffs of reporters that few web sites can match. Their importance grows with the growth of the web-when I can get the AP wire stories faster than they can true reporting becomes much more important for the newspapers. The editorial page will also grow in importance and this relates to the "trust" issues. * Do not think the newspapers are not agressivly entering the web markets. They are totally poised to do capitalize on all their traditional assests and skills and transfer them to the web. So once again to reiterate: newspapers arent going anywhere. Note: I dont work for a newspaper or anything but I have been a printing/pre-press consultant for many years and I know these guys. They have been thinking hard on this issue for much longer than Mr. Katz. ps-I like John katz's stories.
of course, /. folks like to play "clever contrarian", so it doesn't shock me that some many of you have rallied around an utterly dead concept like the daily newspaper.
If this were 1910, you'd all be lobbying for horse-drawn carriages.
This morning I picked up my paper and read a few of the headlines. From there i went to the comics. While looking back on the event and looking at why I recieve the newspaper, I came to the conclusion, childhood. As a child I found lots of uses for the the newspaper. Namely the pirate hat. I gained lots of enjoyment and creativity from the paper from reading the funnies then using the funnies as wrapping paper for gifts and so on. Can there be another use for them? Yes. maybe if more reporters would not just spout statements before actually researching and gaining a bit of knowledge on the subjects, i.e. the computer industry. More reporters now look for nothing but hype rather than fact. What makes Slashdot efective from a reporting standpoint? TO me it is the abiltity to actually go to the source of the news and read more directly from the source. The only other reason I find use for it. For the friday issue our local prints a What is happening during the weekend section. In this section I am able to find all I need to know about things to do.
News papares are more accountable to telling the truth than the internet. If you want information that you can trust (certain sites and certain papaers excluded), then a paper is best. The Paper offers somthing the internet dosnt (and this is how they will survive), information sorting. Already, it is getting harder and harder to find what is relevant to YOU on the net. Papers can serve as a filter for this sea of information. I can also read a papare on the tube. I cnat browse the internet on the tube.
If God created us in his own immage, how do you explain Vanessa Feltz?
As displays continue to evolve and improve, I do believe webpads/palmtop/insert_buzzword will displace paper.
But for the forseeable future, I know when it's time to go sit on the throne, I'll always root around for hardcopy.
I admit I briefly skim the sports section, and may at least glance the cover of each section to see if there is anything remotely interesting.
Local news coverage is best served by newspapers in my area, the local television news is too "sensational" and at least seems to cater to my grand parents generation. I usually feel insulted the way the news is portrayed on television, and to a slightly lesser extent in the newspaper.
What can newspapers do to be more appealling? I would suggest adding regular technical sections, and recruiting geeks to write, and posting printed versions of the on-line formums that we all like to participate in. They should also strive to appeal more to the magic 18-24 male demographic, by featureing non-mainstream sports regularly, and other alternative hobbies that teens are turning to for enjoyment.
Also building quality websites that directly mirror the printed version (in term of content) would help a lot. I like to feel confident that I'm not missing anything if I were to pick up the dead tree.
Though it is a long shot that I will ever go back to reading a newspaper.
I read our local paper (The Ithaca Journal) every day, and i read The New York Times on tuesday and sunday. (tuesday primarily for the science tuesday section, sunday primarily for the week in review and the magazine).
There is a certain appeal to dead-tree-ware that is difficult to attain with electronic information. For one, in the days of the web, most really good stuff goes away, and short of doing a tedious recursive wget (which dynamic content, smart client side scripts that phone home, and stuff like that seems to serve no other purpose than to deliberately prevent effective mirroring) there is no way for me to take a clipping and add it to my scrapbook folder.
Also paper media don't have that transience that the internet does. Think about the DeCSS thing. When the shit hit the fan, the MPAA knew who to talk to when it needed to censor it, and they made it a little harder to get at.
Now, think about when some telephone lineman's technical journal didn't think before publishing all the control tones for Ma Bell's analog switches that enabled all the phone phreaks to have their fun, make their red and blue boxes, etc... Bell was out of luck, because the printed media got taken home by many students, people, etc... and it was too late.
For a more eloquent discussion of this difference between printed and electronic media, look at this link http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/ users/rja14/eternity/eternity.html
---
Play Six Pack Man. I
there have already been great points made regarding the newspaper's advantage in reporting local events. I think another key issue to me is the convenience. The local daily paper is delivered to my doorstep at about the time I get up in the morning. Therefore, I have an easily accessable recap of the previous day's events to peruse as I drink coffee, eat breakfast, and generally get ready to face the day.
While the user interface may be clumsy, the added advantage of near instant obsolesance is handy. If I spill my bowl of cereal onto my computer, there's a risk of damage to equipment that's financially unfeasable to replace often, but if I spill on the newspaper, I've only lost a portion of one day's news...the next day will bring another "upgrade".
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" 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.
Some days, I do read the newspaper:
Detroit News
Detroit Free Press
'Nuff said.
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
10. Wide range of stories from across the nation insures you're likely to read something you didn't hear anywhere else.
9. Nifty full-page weather graphic on back page keep you in touch with the outdoors when you've been in your cubicle or office coding for days on end.
8. Doesn't cost anything to read the articles a few days late, unlike the web site.
7. News sections divided into categories (News, Financial, Sports, Life) so you can throw out the ones that don't apply to you.
6. Writers are psychic. (Hey, how else do you explain how a paper that arrives in the mail yet still manages to remain timely?)
5. Colorful, unlike the local newspaper which is in black and white.
4. No obituaries.
3. It's Free! Well, if you can convince your office to subscribe to it, that is.
2. Real-estate section of national classified ads is a great place to look for a retirement home to buy when stock options vest.
1. Still waiting for USA Tommorrow to show race track results.
I'm not a journalist, but I play one on slashdot
Did you know that the Onion is actually printed weekly? The stories are hilarious in print. The weekly paper in Madison, Milwaukee, and (i think)Denver.
What I have observed is that "lazy" and "corporate" (definitions to follow) don't attract any of my attention - and none of my money, similar to how "lazy" and corporate websites don't get any of my time.
What I look for in papers is true in-depth coverage, with incisive, analytical thinking that goes beyond the flit-of-the-moment reporting. I want to exercise a part of my brain that calls on me to not just digest the news of the day, but make my own decisions as to what of it matters -- where I will invest my energies, my support, and most of all, the limited amount of time each day I have to try to make a difference in.
Definitions: my definition of lazy and corporate newspapers are those who simply pass on the "flavor of the day" news. Any reporter can sit and wait for his pampered sources to provide something deemed newsworthy -- however, these news reporters can't do much more than "spin" what is related to them -- they are not digging below the surface to uncover the truth. Similarly, corporate sources tend to not offer a real view of the world -- imagine if the Microsoft web site admitted that Active Directory sucked bigtime compared to NDS 8.
What I want to read (web or paper) is the truth -- however good, bad, or ugly it may be. [side note: notice that in the Open Source world this tends to happen -- Linux freely admits that Linux got handed its arse in certain areas -- thanked the benchmark companies and said in essence "thanks for showing us where we can improve.]
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
I come to slashdot for specialist news on stuff that interests me. I read papers for general news. A paper that is sweeping London is the Metro. It's a small brother to the Evening Standard, but it's free and distributed at the tube entrances. It's stapled so it doesn't fly all over the carriage and it covers most of the general world news, not necessarily flash headlines like the pay papers, but interesting stuff for the read on the way to work. That's the way to go. Also the reason places like /. are popular, is the fact that you can post. Only one or two readers letters will be posted in any paper.
Judging by all the nice things Katz has to say about newspapers I'm sure none of them have ever rejected any of his submissions or criticized his writing talents in any way.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I dunno - there's a lot of papers experimenting w/ 'new media' like our local rag 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)
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
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
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.
First off, I have come to the rather suprising discovery that the mythical beast "the liberal media" seems to be largely an invention of Limbaughtomites.
I graduated from college last year. During this final year of freed^H^H^H^H^Hschool, I subscribed to the Dallas Morning News, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the San Jose Mercury. What was astounding to me was the similarity between these publications. Rarely did one paper carry something substantial the others did not, although the Mercury was more likely to do so than the others. And by and large the tone of each of these papers was the same: bemoan the latest bloodcrime, force-feed the reader what horrible things the right is alledging the Clinton administration has done, do feel-good "environmental" stories on new-fangled technologies that might come into play 10 years from now, do endless stories on the morality of children and "7th Heaven" feel good bullshit, and generally make one great-big circle-jerk of reactionary journalism. Oh yes, and actually publish (in the case of the DMN) letters to the editor complaining about the lingerie ads and how they are tempting our children to be promiscuous.
If newspapers want to survive they should take a hint from the popularity of Gov. Jesse Ventura. Newspapers are equally as guilty as our elected officials when it comes to meekly cowering when controversy arises. People (i.e.: readers) respect you when you take a principled stand. Newspapers seem to have fallen prey to the up-with-big-business hate-democracy hate-libruhls mindset that has so captured the Republican party. This paradigm is advanced by powerful people, but they do not represent America as a whole. Evidence can, as I mentioned earlier, be seen for this in the election of Gov. Ventura, as well as Sen. McCain's victory in Michigan yesterday.
If newspapers want to survive, they must act out of principle. I'm not sure that this is possible, however, because the forces arrayed against the so-called liberal media are vast and angry. When newspapers take risks they upset those people who prefer the comfort of the familiar. Progressive ideas are therefore shunned (somewhat involuntarily, I'm sure), leading to a stagnation of ideas and of the paper itself.
One thing I did notice that these papers shined brightest when they focused on local issues. These stories made me want to get involved, even though the events happened far away geographically. The national media covers national events; local papers -- with the possible exception of the NYT -- should concern themselves primarily with local issues. This will get people to read the paper more frequently; national issues are covered in innumerable other sources.
Oh yes, and I do whack of to the lingerie ads. Keep those in there, especially if said has has Laetitia Casta. Mmmm. Scrum-dilly-um-scious!
Just because common all garden newspapers don't cater for every trend, demographic and subset of society doesn't mean that they have no use.
If you are going too look at tehm and critisize them on technology and cultural content I think you need include in your comparison the 'newspapers' that cater to the different cliques of society. Take Computer Weekly and Computing in the UK, or Network Week.
These all cover the areas you talk about in some technical depth and are relevant to the people who read them.
Daily NEWSpapers are there to let people know the news of what has happened over th elast day and night from around the world and local.
Personally my mornign starts at work with me reading Slashdot, ZDNet UK News, the Independant website and the BBC news online service. Occasionally I check out the Washington Post, New Your Times, or Ft.COM all online to catch up on different perspectives.
Personally I would prefer to read them in paper format, but I don't have the time in teh mornign to pick them up
You say that newspapers are no longer relevant to culture... I say they are. At various times I have read various papers to get information on various things and it tends to be informative and more trustworthy than web content, biased sure, but there is a higher percentage of BS on th eweb than in the mainstream papers.
I would assert that the papers are here, they perform their function well to the larger part of society and that the assertation that they will be destroyed by the net is akin to the same arguements used when radio and television come about.
Working for the (other) man
Sure, I'll still read the paper. I still listen to AM radio (to get traffic reports and listen to football games) occasionally. Newspapers grew fat and happy by driving out the competition. The two newspaper town in very rare these days. The emergence of phenomena like "The Drudge Report" are a return to the days of competitive news sources. Reporters actually have to "scoop" the competition to do well. I mean; c'mon, when was the last time the "Washington Post" was relevant? When was the last time they hired a reporter who wasn't a j-school grad and wasn't afraid to tweak the local Establishment's nose? Just doesn't happen anymore. H.L. Mencken doesn't write for the newspapers anymore; his succesors are cranking out webpages now.
I quit quit my subscription to the local dead-tree print several years ago, when they went online. IMO their website sucks royally (layout is width constrained to 640, looks bad on my 1600SW) but the local news is still there. I might read 10% of the articles posted.
.. maybe the "Justice" Dept. should go after them after they get done with M$.
When it comes to national and international news I feel like once I've scanned the wire I've read all the news for the day that I'm likely to hear or read anywhere else in the non-specialized media. It really bothers me that the AP has so much control over the news
Newspapers are dying (IMHO) but not in the last-gasp, nothing more kind of way. I agree with previous posters that newspapers need to get on the ball and stick with local reporting. But not the one-sided tripe that tends to grace the pages of fish-wrappers like the Boston Globe. Please either make it impartial (and non-sensational - something most media can't seem to stay away from at all, no thanks to Geraldo Rivera et al) or let both sides do the talking.
The web affords me the opportunity to see multiple sides of a story by going to sites like The Economist as well as another hole of poor journalism, CNN (have I made enough provacative statements as to get moderated down yet?). For this simple reason, I will continue to stay away from newspapers. Reading a rehash of an AP or Reuters story isn't what I want to see. I prefer to see raw data - I don't want it spoon fed. I'll make the decision. I have a brain and I like to use it (something that newspapers and media in general seem to have forgotten). If newspapers can actually start impartially reporting once again what went on at the local level (perhaps the one thing that I _might_ give to the Globe) then perhaps they can get their readership back. However, there's no way in hell that they're going to gain back an audience delivering the same info that thousands of other online sources already generate. Print is just too slow for that.
"I think print is dead"
long live egonLet's follow the russian nightly news lead and have naked women featured predominantly in our newspapers! Hopefully the quality of newspapers will deteriorate to the quality which Katz describes and they'll stop killing trees...
and stuff...
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
AOL IM: jeanlucpikachu
[o]_O
I think that online journalism has a place to cover instant breaking news with hyperlinked drilldown depth.
I would like to see newspapers become more like news magazines and put the journal back in journalism. In depth coverage and context -- rather than who what where when why.
The 'Net is much more suited to what T.S. Elliot called the "visions and revisions that a minute will reverse."
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--
Program Intellivision!
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.
-d9
I think that Slashdot needs a (-1: Christian) moderation. Why? Well, bear with me. Take the above post as an example. There are two possibilities as to its intent. First, it is a troll from somebody who is posing as a Christian and is pretending to be annoying. In that case, it should be moderated as (-1: Troll). On the other hand, it just might be an actual Christian who is being genuinely annoying. In that case, the proper moderation would be (-1: Offtopic) or (-1: Flamebait).
Now, for the above post, I'd say it's pretty obvious that it was a troll. But some others are not so obvious, and in those cases, it would be a shame to apply the incorrect moderation; you would not want to moderate a non-troll as a troll or vice versa. In these cases, I think that a (-1: Christian) moderation would fit both cases, and would promote correct use of the moderation system. That's JMHO anyway.
I tired of the dumbed-down information that my local rag foisted upon me, mostly a collection of tired news and local claptrap, none of which held interest or relevancy for me. I have not read a local paper for the past two years, relying exclusively on publishing, magazines, and the Net for my information. I even avoid the television, as it seems to cater to the same audience that the newspapers want to impress.
I don't think that a newspaper could ever persuade me to subscribe. They have just gone too far down their chosen path; they're nothing but junk mail for me now.
What'dya mean there's no BLINK tag!?
The Inverted Pyramid: So, in the early 19th Century, when reporters were transmitting newspaper stories across the country via telegraph, there was a concern that the lines might go down during transmission, and that part of the story would be lost. The inverted pyramid writing style, in which the most important, general elements of a story come immediately after the lead, followed by consecutively more specific details, ensured that a newspaper could still print a story if the telegraph lines went down halfway through... apparently, newspapers are still really worried about those telegraph lines, 'cause this archaic style is still employed. There are WAY more interesting writing styles they could use these days, but newpapers are tenaciously clinging to an outdated mode that technology rendered irrelevant before I was born.
http://www.farmerbob.org
I find myself reading all major news sources online twice daily. These include my local paper (jsonline.com), abcnews.com, and cnn.com. The local paper offers local topics of interest to me, while the latter offers up-to-the-minute world news.
Plus, the online sources are free. I don't mind paying $.50 for daily papers or $1.75 for the behemoth Sunday edition, but it seems like a waste of paper and ink to me, considering it's available for free.
However, after reading some of the posts, I have become totally dependent on using online news services. Last time I bought an actual newspaper was last week (apartment hunting) and before that, 2 years ago (apartment hunting).
Paper media will probably never die, at least not in my lifetime, but while I'm becoming more dependent on online services, I'm becoming less dependent on paper.
I'd rather see a tree in the forest than a day old paper on my table again. The newspaper's time has come and gone. Let it go.
This probably won't go over very well, but the reason I picked the newspaper I did when I lived in an area with multiple papers is the comics section. Period. News stories are covered basically the same in an area with multiple papers, but some comics you could only get in one place. Newspaper editors have ignored this for far, far too long, and it's time it changed. What thing gets people more riled up and calling the paper than anything else? A change in the comics section. Take something out, and man you'll have phone calls. Doesn't that tell editors ANYTHING? Pay more attention to the comics section, run the strips bigger, make them go for two pages, and get more of them. They cost next to nothing to buy for the dailies, and the same amount for the Sunday strips. Spend the bucks there, that's what people have a passion for. If you did that, you'd have people flocking to the paper.
When I want news, I want it now!, not in 24 hours when things might have changed. Working as an IT professional, it's a large part of my job to stay in touch with what is happening today. In this newspapers are the LAST resort, and not much of one at that. I think that newspapers should retreat and regroup, putting much more effort into the details behind the stories, report with aclarity and accuracy the result of INVESTIGATION (any newspaper people remember that word?) instead of regurgitating the latest Gallup poll or re-hashing whata I've been watching on CNN for the last 24 hours. I haven't had a newspaper delivered to my door in 6 years, mainly due to frustration at poor reporting and lack of depth that I have come to expect from print media. Just an old geezer geezing.
For the sake of Peace, the Sword.
I do not currently subscribe to the Post up here at WVU. I get most of my news from slashdot, or other internet sites. I get a lot of it from word of mouth. Sometimes I watch the news while I do homework.
The one paper that I do read is the Daily Atheneum, which I probably spelled wrong, since only freshmen refer to it as anything other than the DA.
I read it to get campus news, and local stuff that I don't find online. Pretty often, nothing is happening. I don't really give 2 shits about who is going to be elected to student government, especially since they are pretty much powerless. A recent poll revealed that about 4% of WVU students voted in the last election, a reflection of the mighty power wielded by the pretty boy frat guys that win this popularity contest.
My point is. Unless there is real local news, there isn't really much point in reading the paper anymore. I read the DA about once a month, when I find a copy on the floor of one of my less interesting lectures.
Stuff that I care about, I can read on the net, and when it's covered in the papers, it's usually covered wrong anyways. Y2K was a great example of that one.
I'll read the comics, if I have time... Goats and Userfriendly that is.
Eh...
...to get me to read the news paper again is actual, honest, unbiased reporting.
Far too often, I've heard the "right wing establishment" moan and complain about the "elite left wing media" and how they "stiffle and control content to have a strongly liberal slant." At first, this sounded absurd, then I started paying attention and found that if is far more true than not.
Today's techno-geek is far less interested in towing the democratic-liberal line nor very interested in right-wing conservatism except as it applies to them. The techno-geek is synical (honest?) about ever growing the role of government in their technological lives and the fact that the media continues to pander to that goal. Take for instance any article on "hacking" in any standard newspaper. It is always portrayed as "those evil techno-geeks trying to steal your credit card numbers" and how there doesn't seem to be any way to stop them but the government is "talking about doing something, I hope they do it soon!" As example, President Clinton's (*laugh*) recent Internet Security Summit (*big laugh*). How worthless was that as far as actually doing something about this supposed problem? Most techno-geeks realize that it's nothing more than a launchpad for yet more government controles and bureaucracy into "cyberspace."
And where was the "elitest left-wing media" in all this? Right there cheering it on while the average, non-techno-geek readers accept it as a "good thing." Frankly, it scares most tech-savy people.
As a result of this obvious bias, most tech-savy/techno-geeks have come to distrust "traditional" reporting institutions, including the newspapers and have turned to web reporting to get their information.
Web reporting, in contrast tends to more closely follow the "openness" typified of internet residents. In web reporting, techno-geeks feel that they can get a truely unbiased report, free from the hinderances of political, union, or other pressures.
Therefore, the only thing that will get me and other technical people to even consider reading something as quaint as a newspaper again is to start rebuilding our trust in it. Start with fair reporting.
I know that this will probably never happen. The powers that hold and control newspapers are strong and will refuse to let go. A popular saying the martial art Aikido is "once your oponent has given you something, never give it back" is well learned by the newspapers masters. I'll be real sorry when the grand old institutions of the newspapers die. Rest In Peace.
Kirk Lawson
lklawson@heapy.com
Maybe if newspapers had a point and click interface I would be more prone to read them. Also, the way newspapers fold is stupid. They are giving news on like 9 square foot piece of paper, that is far to unwieldy to be useful. If newspapers were in a form more like magazine, I would be prone to pick one up and go through it. Even if I don't read everything in a magazine, I flip through it page by page looking at headlines and other stuff that catches my eye. The organization of newspapers is horrible too. It is kind of a collage of information. I like my information to appear neatly in sequential tables not just thrown in a spot where it will fit. I also like the idea of have a summary of an article and then a link to the full story. That is useful for not wasting time reading through a long article that turns out to be boring. Other than that, newspapers are great.
The local paper is 1400dpi, lighter than a laptop, and can last almost 4 weeks in the lavatory provided I don't get diarrhoea.
In the Divided Loyalties episode of the second season of Babylon 5, there was a passing reference to a newspaper that was customized for each person's tastes. An interesting idea, as long as my custom choices were not being sold to some telemarketer every three or four days.
Personally, I would choose every comics section, the local restaurant reviews, real estate listings, coupons and not much else.
Aside to the Courier Journal: I stopped buying your newspaper after you reduced your comics pages. Before your merger with The Louisville Times, there were two full pages of comics every day, and a full eight pages of color comics on Sunday. Now, you have maybe a page?
I just can't see the ability of a newspaper to deliver news stories editorials and comics as well as the web. But coupons and local advertising are poorly addressed best delivered by papers. When it comes to news - papers are going to fall flat on their faces. I still want ads and coupons good at the store I will be shopping at on Sunday. Can the web do the same over time? Sure, but the global nature of the net is a strike against it for groceries.
It is worth noting that newspapers do provide one important function. It's important that people read things that they may not immediately agree with, they they expose themselves to other views. One of the biggest risks of news on the web is that one can isolate onesself from things you don't want to hear. Balancing this with the need for choice is hard.
Anyway, Jon stated:
What, you want USA Today? If I was going to get a newspaper (I don't, largely for the reasons above), I would get the Wall Street Journal. Minimal graphics. Pure text content. I like Slashdot for it's minimal graphics and high content value. Graphics aren't really important for more news.Search 2010 Gen Con events
Personally, I have always considered newspapers to be environmentally irresponsible. If we have any concern at all for the limited resources of our planet, some rethinking of outdated habits is long overdue.
I still think the newspapers have an edge in quality of writing over most web sites, where poor grammar and poor spelling seem to rule the day. Even the poorest papers, IMO, seem to have better usage than some of the better web sites. I think having a high standard of your native language is important.
The writer above would probably benefit from reading newspapers more often.
< /rant >
---
You were a moderator with 5 points. You should have read the moderator guidelines before you did any moderating
Only those too stupid to get their information online. Pathetic...........
I choose my media based on content, not format.
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.
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.
--
Linux user since early January 1992.
Only about 30% of the population use computers to get their media content. Often times I find myself getting out of synch with the local TV and newspaper perspectives. It can be very confusing at times to sift through all the different angles on a given subject that are available on the internet (I believe the result is termed "net head"). Local network news though often a little parochial is comfortably a little more consistant.
Papers do miss a range of subjects. Why do they miss alot of pop culture & technology news? Because they're targeting thier audience - the older generation. How many younger people habitually read the paper as opposed to the number of older people? The newspaper is a business, and they're playing the numbers and catering to thier larger audience.
I won't ever read a newspaper again. But I'm a geek with little interest in local or international news. Everywhere I am, there is a computer, or another device that can connect to the net; and from the net, I can get at pretty much all the news that I am interested in. I can get at technology news that is better written, and that contains, by far, more content. I dont like having to work my way through many huge, full page adds from car dealers, or whatever. Atleast the banners on websites are generally located at the extremes of the page (top or bottom), and not submerged in the content.
Other news fora are certainly dynamic, always-current, latest-and-greatest... but, when I want actual, in-depth coverage, I go to newspapers. Granted, it's a rare day that I actually buy a paper, but I certainly check www.nytimes.com and www.wsj.com on a daily basis, and other papers as well -- they all have their strong points, and usually go into considerably more depth (and breadth) than most "standard" on-line news sources. Does this mean that I think newspapers are safe? Not at all; I actually think they're in a fair bit of trouble. But, as with any major paradigm shift, there are *always* dinosaurs who have issues. I simply think that many of the better newspapers will be able to cope with the changes, and perhaps even come out the better for it. After all, why bother reading the Daily Planet, when cnn.com is better? They will have to continue to find their audience, be it local coverage, in-depth coverage, financials, politics, whatever. "Build a better mousetrap."
HOLY WAR NOW
by Tony Alamo
Recently, Randall Terry, executive director of Operation Rescue, suggested that all good Christians unite under God's holy banner and secede from the United States of America. The Bible foretells this great division in Revelations. The Apostle Paul writes in II Corinthians 6:14-15, "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? and what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?" Is there a better description of the place of Christianity in America today?
Most good Christians know in their hearts that America was founded by fundamentalist Christians seeking a place where they could establish a holy land based on the Ten Commandments and other Biblical laws. Today, nothing could be further from the truth. Today, the sinister Catholic Bill Clinton rules our country with a Satanic fist, linked with the sodomites, feminists, Vatican, Process Church of the Final Judgment (PCFJ, or simply Process), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Cult Awareness Network (CAN), Bureau of alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), the Jewish-controlled media, the Mafia-run, proto-legal gambling, drug and prostitution rings, the Jesuit cult eradication syndicate of anti-Christian propaganda infiltration, and the Son of SAM/Satanic Cathedral of Greater New York. The Vatican/Jesuit/Satanic one-world government (or "New World Order") has a factory or Process training ground for pseudo-Christian so-called cults which serve the purpose of tarnishing Christianity in the public eye. This factory uses many tools, including child abuse, ritual torture, media insemination, untruth propagation and total immolation to produce fanatic baby-eating cult psychopaths like David Koresh and Charles Manson. The Branch Davidians weren't harming anybody -- yet (for information on the government's long-term plan for Koresh, see my pamphlet "Re-Crucifying Christ in Waco, Texas," published in June, 1973, twenty years before the actual event occurred!! Praise Jesus). The ATF moved swiftly on Koresh and his brainiacs, feeding lies to the Jewish media about slavery, slave labor camps, child abuse, pet abuse, spouse abuse, drug abuse, and tax evasion, which I am not guilty of. Of course the media printed these lies and the Vatican spread them to every filthy corner of this Godless, secular humanist world doomed to hell, by God's mighty unrelenting flaming fist.
Some of the more astute and devout Christians may have noticed the escalating cataclysms of the past year. The riots in Los Angeles, Atlanta, New York and other major urban dens of sin; the floods in America's heartlands; and the Hellish heat all over America are all Biblical signs of God's coming Judgment -- veritable plagues sent upon modern-day America as punishment for baby killings, rampant sodomy, condom distribution in public schools and general immorality. If God was a federal judge, he would throw the Book (the Bible) at humanity the defendant! Repent NOW and avoid risking God's righteous wrath!
In Revelations, God tells us that his flaming sword of nuclear judgment will strike humanity not once, not twice, but three times before Armageddon. The human pain and suffering will be unbearable and tragic. Only 144,000 Christians will survive the real Holocaust, and these will be the Righteous Few who have accepted God's One True Sacred Holy Spoken Word. See the end of this pamphlet for details.
The most frightening aspect of the End Times are the frequent and visible manifestations of Satan. The recent controversy over Pepsi's "One World Government" advertisements has prompted a global Christian boycott of Pepsico and its sister companies IBM, GE, Hershey's and Time/Warner due to the unbelievable overt Satanic symbolism and messages of the ads. Doesn't Revelations warn us about the "new world order" and the Whore of Babylon?
The three teenagers who murdered those boys in Arkansas were inadvertent agents of the Jesuit-Catholic-Process conspiracy. They were enticed and deceived into crime by Steve McNeill of Memphis, who gave them their satanic rock music, LSD and marijuana, the sin corporations whose ultimate interest lies in the destruction of old-fashioned American Christianity. Are you going to sit back and let this happen?
Sharon Tate paid for her dabbling in satanic rituals with her life. Satan's tax agents, the IRS, sent the Process assassin Charles Manson to doublecross Tate in cold-blooded murder. Her husband Roman Polanski, an admitted pervert and pedophile, was a disgruntled pagan and had planned to expose the IRS and CAN in a new film produced by Dino de Laurentiis and Pepsico. When Pepsi found out about the anti-CAN plot of the film, they contacted the Satanic Assassins Movement (SAM), who had just kidnapped and brainwashed a new killer named David Berkowitz (the Son of SAM). SAM is based on the pagan cult of Hassan i Sabbah, the Old Man of the Mountain, who could, like modern Satanists, send faceless, nameless, heartless, godless assassins to any corner of the globe to do Belial's work. SAM contacted PCFJ, who dispatched Charles Manson, a hypnotic hippie and drug-crazed murderer, to kill Polanski and Tate before the IRS and CAN could be exposed.
Of course, Polanski's film was never made, since he now resides in Europe with homosexuals and Nazis. And until now, nobody has been made aware of the devil's conspiracy headed by the Pope, the IRS and the President of the United States. All three are preparing to reveal to the world their plan for registering all Christian citizens in a vast "Book of Names" -- one copy for the White House, one copy for the Vatican, one copy for the IRS and one copy for CAN! I, Tony Alamo, have taken it upon myself to reveal this dastardly plan and to invite all Christians to rise up and destroy the wicked!!
That's right. I want all good, true Christians to join me in spiritual sedition. We must separate ourselves in the eyes of God from the evil that has apparently taken over our once proud nation. Jesus Himself said, "Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve" (Matthew 4:10). We shall only serve the Lord our God in Heaven, Amen, and let our mighty holy war begin.
You might ask yourself, "How do I participate in this righteous combat?" Begin by organizing your Christian community. Help us fight the Satanists by joining in the boycott against Pepsi and its sister companies. Form vigilante prayer groups. Help Operation Rescue shut down abortion clinics. Patronize only Christian establishments and businesses. Do not encourage the sodomites and satanists. Do not buy L. Ron Hubbard's books. Spare the rod and spoil the child. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Be political, not polite. Fight the power. Buck the devil.
Avoid hell's everlasting torments by accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as your Overlord, your King, your Master, your one and only Dominator, your Disciplinarian, your Patriarch and your Savior. Receive His free gift of eternal life in heaven's undescribably beautiful paradise. Order now and you'll also receive two Blessings and more Tony Alamo pamphlets! "Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved" (Acts 14:12). There is no possible other way in the entire universe for you to receive salvation but through Jesus. Unite your spirit to God through Christ by the Holy Spirit. To accomplish this miracle of life eternal, send no money now. Say this prayer:
Now that you are saved and forgiven of your sins, raise your hands and praise the Lord very loudly so everybody can hear.
Tony Alamo
World Pastor, Holy Alamo Christian Church
THIS LITERATURE CARRIES THE ONLY PLAN OF SALVATION. DO NOT THROW IT AWAY; PASS IT ON TO ANOTHER.
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.
We're on the road to Tycho.
The only reason I still read papers is their portability. I can read them on the tube or bus without needing to boot them up. And I can scan articles very quickly, due to the size of the paper.
I read the newspaper everyday. There are stories in the paper that are not on slashdot, of course. In addition to international and national news, I get local news, editorial columns, even the comics and Ann Landers. A lot of those things may be available on-line, but in my newspaper, they're in one handy package that gets delivered to my doorstep -- and I can set my lunch on it while I'm reading.
I don't think the web will replace newspapers soon. I'd love to see it chase those insipid "news" shows off of TV, though.
Cara Hart chart@eNOSPAMfurn.com Systems Administrator eFurn.com, LLC. and ARITEK Systems, Inc.
I can't stand getting a daily paper. Just the sheer waste management is more trouble than it is worth.
We do get the paper on weekends, here's what we read:
Friday: Entertainment section. It's easier to grab the movie schedules/reviews on our way out the door than it is to go to computer, log on, go to web site, print web site (waisting tons of paper, for some reason movie time sites don't have a condensed print version).
Sat: Nothing
Sunday: We go for the guts: You know the little plastic bundle of adds, comics, and more adds. I'm a shopaholic so I just love perusing the Best Buys, Circuit City, and Comp USA adds.
What would it take to get us to subscribe to a daily paper:
Make it small so waist management is a non-issue.
Fill it with adds and usefull entertainment information.
*****Instead of the normal newspaper media, print it on something like a PC-Connection/PC-Mall or Global computer catalog. These are bright colorful, stay open, fit in a backpack and most importantly: Stack and throw away easily.....
Yet again Mr. Katz has hit the perverbial nail on the head. I think he must be reading my mind. SALUTE! Now stop butchering those helpless trees!
<i>I'm sorry. Did I run over your dogma?</i>
I get my news from websites such as /. hearsay from politically active friends and flat out refuse to get it from newspapers, magazines, or TV.
Too many times, I've seen a news story about a topic I am interested in and thus am well read in, only to see the journalist confuse the facts, delete important information, or add important info.
It feels like it happens every time I see the news. Therefore, I propose we bring credibility back to news by requiring journalists to follow the same rules of fact reporting and opinion-providing that every other kind of writer is held to - cite your sources, give credit where due, say which info comes straight from an expert and which ideas are your own, and don't report on stuff you don't understand.
oh, and one more thing that I'd like to remind to all journalists who seem to have slept through all their college stat and lab sci classes. . . corellation != causation.
I stopped reading the print news papers a long time ago for the simple reason that they are nothing more than print versions of TV news. For the most part, they're sensationalistic and shallow. Stories have no depth, no follow up, and little integrity. The one exception is in local or community news and that varies from paper to paper. In fact, I often find the small undergroudn papers report local news with less bias and more detail than the mainstreams papers. If daily papers reported the news with higher standards more depth and followed up on stories, I would read them regardless of the medium they were printed on. The news paper editor Katz mentioned needs to look back a couple of decades at standards that used to be followed and return to them. That way, readers are attracted to the quality rather than the fact you have poor reporting printed on dead trees.
by Egan Spengler in Ghostbusters: "Print is dead"
WTF?!?
*I want it to be free (as in free beer)
*I want ink that won't gunk up my fingers
*I want it where I am, not in a box on the street, but on my desk.
*I want more comics.
That would help me read it. The more I stay away from the computer, the healther my hands are.
-Jeff
I read the newspaper every morning. It's a heck of a lot easier on my eyes than staring at a computer monitor for extended periods (I print out source code for the same reason). While the navigation interface is perhaps less than ideal, it's got several advantages...
I can read it at the kitchen table, and I don't have to worry about dropping it, spilling coffee on it, picking it up with greasy fingers, or anything else. If I really ruin it, I'm out about maybe $0.50. I don't have to make sure it's plugged in, and I never have to replace batteries.
Even a cheap LCD-tablet isn't going to be able to compete. Electronics are fragile -- they don't like being dropped or immersed in water for cleaning. They're expensive; if I set a hot pot down on one and melt the screen, I've just lost a chunk of money.
I don't see newspapers -- or print media in general -- going away anytime soon. We'll need to see major advances in technology before any electronic device is robust enough that it can replace a book, a newspaper, or even a simple sprial-bound notebook.
Lars Kellogg-Stedman <lars@larsshack.org>
I get my (non-tech) news here in Halifax, NS, Canada from two major sources.
(1) CBC Radio 1
They provide excellent depth of coverage with a good balance of local, regional, national, and international news. I listen mostly in the car, and first thing in the morning when I'm trying to get out of bed.
(2) The Chronicle Herald
This is Canada's last major independant newspaper. Sure its tech coverage is laughable, but its a good all around paper. The only problem is that its competiton (a horrible rag called the Daily News that got bought by Conrad Black) has the rights to Dilbert.
I do most of my reading on the throne.
I've sometimes considered dropping the newspaper and relying only on the radio for news. Maybe if I put a radio in the bathroom. But the net and even the radio just can't beat the tactile feeling of a newspaper.
The net is far too confined for general news. I will never have a computer in my bathroom, or read a web page while I'm driving.
------- Mark
My problem with newspapers is the same problem that I have with the media at large.
I prefer info sources like slashdot for one main reason. The authors are interested in what they are writing about. I HATE HATE HATE it when I read a story, know that most of it is false, and realize that the newspaper in question is making money by misinforming the public.
I will continue to read the daily paper (the Orlando Sentinal in my area) until there are no longer insightful and provacative editorials.
I don't need a paper for the latest news. I get that from the radio. I want to read the thoughtful opinions of the gifted writers out there.
In my case, I like to read Charley Reese every other day. His ultra-conservative-ism is a breath of fresh air to me.
Sounds like Katz is proposing overly media-rich online news. Inevitably, literacy will decline.
Open the source, Comrade.
Stepping aside the issue of content (you can't please everyone) I just like reading a paper on my way into work in the morning.
I find it more practical and convenient than carrying a laptop with a crappy resolution that needs to have the screen adjusted because of the way light gets reflected off it.
Content is a separate issue that should be left to supply and demand...
-- "To ask a question is to show ignorance; Not to ask a question means you'll remain ignorant."
To me, the news paper and news magazines are a dead medium. News is supposed to be current, yet hard-copy is by definition a static medium. You can't easily search or cross-reference it. It costs the consumer, and kills trees. Hard-copy should be reserved for novels. Current events and reference works belong in electronic form. Why would I want to read the 'news' from 8 hours ago?
Yes, agreed, the Internet, www and TV provide much faster news than conventional print media, there is no denying that. However...
Look closely at many www portals, and you'll see it's the same old regurgitated garbage. Look even closer, and you'll find a complete lack of credibility - no editorial staff, breadth or expertise, just some john trying to make a quick buck on the www. In fact, in many of the new media the news is too quick, allowing no time for reflection or checking of facts.
Conventional publishing and media houses have hundreds of specialised and dedicated staff that know their stuff and check their facts. We're not oblivious to the reality though: because "information" is our prime asset, we can't afford to give it away for free. Advertising is too unsteady and just doesn't make up the revenue.
So, at the moment many publishers and media groups are backing off, and hesitating to give away their prime asset. Sooner or later that will change - and the day that the media decides to truly "go for it" is the day that most of these half-baked portals will go out of business, as there's just no way they can compete.
I read the Washington Post almost daily (get home delivery). But reading the paper takes time, and sometime the stories that are interesting are buried inside sections. Too many people today don't want to put the effort in to make time to read the paper. The TV is sound bites; trite, but easy to absorb (sit on the couch and veg while watching - or even run on a treadmill and watch.)
It might be interesting to read a study of demographics of the readership - education/wealth/occupation
Personally, I think education is a big factor - so maybe the papers have to have the initiative to help the schools in their area and grow a new generation of readers, or die.
Many papers (including the Post) have the problem of slanting coverage to match regional views, which isn't right, and puts some readers off. I get pissed at the slant the Post puts on some stuff. But the average person reads a paper and takes it at face value. Shoot, just reading the papers from Washington and Richmond, Va (~100 miles difference) give a whole different impression of what is going on.
--
The Wicked Panda
:Of course these opinions are strictly mine, with no scientific basis (I would get paid for them if there were)
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.
--- If you don't want to know the answer, don't ask the question.
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.
that was Pilotonline
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
The question was; how to keep newspapers relevant. MY answer is a vast improvement in QUALITY, UNBIASED reporting.
QUALITY - I can't count how many times I've read a story that I knew at least a little about (I witnessed it, it's an aviation story, etc) and the story has got several key points COMPLETELY wrong. As in, not even close. Aviation, especially crashes, seem to bring out the worst reporting. The newspapers seem to believe they aren't required to have experts in every field to review stories. I think they are. When I read several stories that contain errors that I know about, it sure makes me wonder about the stories I read that I don't know anything about. How much of those stories is right? Going by what I've seen so far, I'd say less than 50%
BIAS - I think we're slowly returing to the days of yellow journalism. Reporters bias shows up in many stories today, be it abortion, gun control, WTO protests, what have you. You can tell 3 paragraphs into the story which side the reporter sympathises with. Opinion belongs in the opinon section. I've heard reporters claim "but we're human, of course we have biases, we can't completly cover up our biases." Funny, these are usually the same reporters who slam cops for not being 100% perfect 100% of the time. And yes, I do believe reporting is as important as policework, so integrity and honesty are just as important. Sure it's tough to set aside your views to write a fair, balanced story, but as mom used to say, if it ain't worth doing well, it ain't worth doing at all. Good reporting keeps a free country free. If noone respects the press, the politicos are free to do as they please, assured that press reports will be disbelieved.
But I agree with several posters who have stated that newspaper is MUCH eaiser to read than a computer screen. True, stories on the net are much more focused, and because I can go to specialty sites (AVWeb, for instance, for aviation information, here for tech information, etc), I have a better feeling about the quality of stories. But a newspaper is much easier to read, I can flip through, scan the headlines, and read a paragraph or two to see if I'm interested. Sure I _COULD_ do this on the net, except that in the time it takes me to retrieve the first story I have interest in, I could have gone through the front page and perused maybe 10 stories. And I find a newspaper to be a much more user-friendly medium.
So _MY_ answer to the question is (1) Hire a panel of experts to act as editors and get the story right; and (2) be aware of, and strive to eliminate bias outside of the opinion section.
{RANTMODE ON - feel free to ignore the rest}
Finally, I must really take exception to the statement "Technology [is] perhaps the central social issue of our times - and without a doubt the biggest ongoing story in America and much of the world" EVERYONE has thier own idea of what the biggest issue is, and they don't always agree. I don't think you can OBJECTIVELY declare one issue to be the biggest issue. For me, the biggest issue is the appalling lack of common curtosey, decency, and respect for our fellow human beings that is so prevelant today. Technology has absolutely zero to do with the fact that a large segment of our population (at least out here in Lost Angel-sleeze) doesn't give a rat's pituty about what effect his actions have on the next guy. But I'm sure that other people have just as valid reasons to see other issues as "the most important". I can think of several off the top of my head that _I_ would rate way above technology. The disintegration of the employer/employee social contract; increasing political corruption; trade/immigration barriers (or lack thereof); growing instability in many governments around the globe - all spring to mind. Technology is mostly about toys. Toys are fun, toys AREN'T a social issue. Toys don't matter.
(RANTMODE OPF)
Merde, il pleut encore!
I depend on my paper for local news (without having to endure the "tits and toupees" news readers on local TV), an excellent thrice-weekly column on local politics (God bless you, Rick Casey), movie and TV listings and reviews, and Dilbert, Doonesbury and a few other comics. The paper also provides good coverage of news from Mexico, which is nearby and has strong economic, cultural and historical ties to San Antonio.
My paper is worth what I pay; I'll keep subscribing.
Hi people
I am using my palm to read 5 newspapers in my city (La Plata Argentina).
By the use of a very stupid code (wrote in some hours), I am able to convert the web pages of the
newpapers in a file for ISilo (www.isilo.com). This is a text browser for the palm (with linux support).
A "cron" collects the news at 6:00 and sync to my
palm when I arrive to my office.
My victims are: El Dia (www.eldia.com), Clarin (www.clarin.com), La Nacion (www.lanacion.com), Pagina12 (www.pagina12.com), ambito Financiero (www.ambitofinanciero.com).
The very intersting status is that I not buying that newspapers, but they offer me the news of the whole newspapers at theirs web pages. Interesting (!!)
OverLord
Or almost. I think the newspaper is still
the best single source for local and global
news and information. I use My Yahoo! too,
and read scattered articles here and there
at Salon, etc. But the newspaper is still
quicker and easier to use than the Web.
I think as long as newspapers continue to
keep an open mind and an eye on the types of
information people look for on the web,
they have an advantage.
Have you ever tried to swat a fly with a monitor???
Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
In my city (Vancouver) all we have is two papers, owned by the same guy, often containing identical articles. Both are Right wing, superficial, have no decent tech info, and totaly ignore gay issues, whole contintents (ex. Africa), and most international politics. I feel like I'm reading pablum filtered through some wierd sort of corporate agenda. On the net I get my Queer news at GAYBC, I get my local cultural news via the CBC, my basic tech info at SLASHDOT, and my international info via many of the thousands of radios listed at at COMFM.FR. This stuff is mostly audio but if I feel like reading I also have a plethora of sites that give a shit about people in general - and not in the short sensationalistic sound byte kind of way most papers seem to. In short, if you want me to read the paper try engaging my mind, make my paper an (intelectualy) interesting read, and offer me a more critical kind of writing. Let the journalist become part of the story (don't be scared to go Gonzo) and have them call a liar a liar, a greedy bastard a greedy bastard, and a spin doctor a spin doctor. Stop offering me sensationalism and corporate politics as usual. Hell, market capitalism may very well be one of the better ways to go - but not unexamined.
I'm pretty left-leaning, but I still get a lot out of the rabid right-ring pro-corporate editorial page. For instance, that's where Bill Gates published a piece which essentially said, "We aren't a monopoly, but everyone uses us, and if you hurt Microsoft, we're taking the economy down with us!" More recently, Bruce Sterling had a bit in there about the DDoS attacks.
To reference a few points:
Slow to grasp the implications of emerging information technologies like radio, TV, cable, then the Net and Web, papers have been asking themselves more or less the same questions for half a century now: what should we be?
Primarily, the role of the newspaper hasn't changed. TV news uniformly sucks, news on the Web has so far completely failed to impress me.
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.
And thank goodness for that! I don't want my news source to be flashy like WiReD, I want news. While I love the WSJ, they recently added a lame, color-and-glitz filled Friday entertainment section which just wastes my time. Look at the web news source we go to--Slashdot is low on graphics, high on prose. This is how most news sources should be.
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...
This is the other place where newspapers, without changing their mission are doing a good job. Anyone else remember how in The Diamond Age, Hackworth got his morning paper? As he rose in the rank of his society, his customized paper got more and more uniformly like the paper of others. It's important that one can't just seek out that news which satisfies one's idiosyncratic interests, but also has a common point of reference with others. A good paper fulfills this role, helping to inform the reader about what the mainstream is thinking about.
I can think of one way newspapers should change to account for new technology. Any article which is in the hard copy should also be online, and easily located. As a subscriber to the hard-copy I should get free access to the online version. While I prefer the paper for browsing, clipping and saving articles isn't as good as printing out, saving, or bookmarking online versions.
The biggest disadvantage to television is that they can censored with ease. If the edidtor does'nt like what's being published on his web site, he can just pull it. Have you ever read something or saw something on television that seems to contradict something your seeing right now? how do you check, how do you make sure the authorities are not changing the facts? The short answer is you can't, not unless you videotape everything you watch on T.V. or save all the web pages you visit. I read newspapers regularly and when I find something intersting I cut is out, and keep it in a scrap book for my personal records.
I read the paper 3 days a week on average, but its becoming harder very week. I just can't stand to look at the awful waste anymore. I read the comics, editorials and front page and end up throwing away 98% of the paper every day. This mechanism for distributing information is so damn inefficient that I hope it dies soon! Why should I have to pay over $1 per day for the privelage of throwing away most of the paper? Why can't they just give me what I need? Oh for the arrival of linux web pads!
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.
/. style news source will become possible, and I honestly believe this is a superior form of news trolling (trolls = funny pages, IYWC)
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.
--
+&x
Now, for the first time, newspapers are starting to catch on to what they can and cannot do. Technological advances have changed the scarcity of information - which was the papers' key advantage - into a vast abundance of information.
Now, newspapers need to adapt in two ways. First, they need to recognize that their role is now that of the ballyhooed "Content Providers." As a former employee of The McGraw-Hill Companies (owner of mags like Aviation Week, Business Week, Coal Week, Nucleonics Week, and even more arcane pubs), I can attest firsthand to the difficulties every company is having in trying to map out its electronic future.
Being a content provider means newspapers need to clearly assess what their strengths and weaknesses are. Papers that mostly regurgitate stories from the Associated Press will have a tough time in the future, as wire stories are available immediately everywhere. Papers that have their own (1) news collection infrastructure, (2) local news coverage, and (3) creative opinions will thrive.
Also, being a content provider means that individuality counts. If you have a reputation for clarity and formality (like the New York Times), capitalize on that. If you have a reputation for conservatism (like the Washington Times) or for liberalism (like the Village Voice), emphasize that reputation. If you have great community coverage, focus on that. If you you just repeat what others have said, and only have readers because your newspaper has a local name on the masthead and is the only newspaper readily available in your area, you've gotta figure out something that makes you special, or you're gonna wither away. Scarcity doesn't work anymore.
Second, newspapers need to recognize that they should not try to compete with the power and immediacy of the Web. Already, many daily newspapers have weekly magazines which provide an opportunity for more reflective and work-intensive pieces that people would rather read on paper than on screens.
More newspapers should shift in that direction, directing their news gathering assets toward bigger, time- and labor-intensive projects which the wire services could never do. They should consider moving to a less frequent publication schedule, and attempt to become more of a center for calm jouralism and mature, deliberative debate. That is the best way newspapers can serve themselves and democracy. At least that way, an infrequent paper edition won't compete against a spin-off online.
Katz, your acquaintance is absolutely right to panic. While the newspaper subscription rates are still not awful, the demographics of newspaper readers will change drastically in the next few years, forever altering the subscription landscape. What is the best technique from here on out? Newspapers should start forging alliances with one another, rather like television networks, with rings of affiliates. They can protect their interests and provide solid content that (as with television) has one crew doing national news and a local crew doing local news. Alliances with other media (like the Washington Post and New York Times deals with MSNBC and ABC News, respectively) will help in making web sites useful, giving paper editions the leeway to calm down, slow down, and do some meaningful writing.
Yours,
A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society
One thing people forget about newspapers: they're hard on people who have vision impairments (like me) or are allergic to the ink used (like me). I also DO NOT miss soggy newspapers!
Count me as someone who wants to read the paper in my typeface and size of choice.
_Deirdre
I read them on the way into work, during my lunch hour, on the way home, and when I'm at home. All times when I am away from my computer.
I read them for a more complete news picture then online news sources provide. TV news is a series of sound bites, which I tend to avoid.
I do check up on the NY Times APOnline several times during the work day, but it doesn't stop me from reading the same story (hopefully expanded) the next day in the paper.
Why should I answer a market survey of an unknown person for free ?
When i went to college, it was with the intention of working on a newspaper after I graduated, as a political cartoonist. I thought it was one of the best and most eloquent things that I could do with my life. Obviously, things changed.
First, newspapers changed; political cartoonists became an expense that they could do without, newspapers didn't want political cartoonists, they wanted artists who would illustrate what the paper was saying in its editorials, and eventually, they didn't even want the controversy that cartoonists seem to breed.
The climate for papers changed; newspapers were being bought up by conglomerates, and then the staffs were cut to reduce overhead. Then the controversial topics were reduced so that the papers were now mostly filled with light, fluffy filler.
The world changed; the Internet replaced my daily paper. I could read about the world without the paper, without being worried that my only source was tainted. I could get the comics without being worried that the newspapers would censor someone.
Cartooning changed - the goal for political cartoonists was to get a syndicate deal, or to get a comic strip deal. They had little or no integrity that was present in previous cartoonists, like Thomas Nast, Walt Kelly, Garry Trudeau. There was almost no professionalism, like Charles Schulz had. Ask me some time about the young cartoonist who told me that he wasn't going to help anyone else out because he didn't get any help getting to where he was.
And I changed, obviously - I didn't want to have to diminish what I said in order to appease a newspaper. I didn't want to have to make a cartoon that said nothing.
I don't read the papers because they are pablum. They refuse to have any controversial bite, any well-though-out reasoning that they were once known for. Someone once told me that the future of news was going to be divided between the Edward Murrows and the Geraldo Riveras. The Riveras won at newspapers - but the net is still filled with a new type of reporter, the individual.
If you want to resurrect the paper - focus on the things that made papers great. In-depth analysis. Stories about people in the community. Opinions that state something. You need to focus on the thinking person, not appeal to the masses. You need to cover the local, not the national. You need to re-discover your roots - and then stretch those roots into the future, make them digital & easily available. How come no one has made a Rocketbook version of their paper? how come there's not a palm WebClipper for the local paper? how come with the expanse of space on the web, local cartoonists aren't being brought up and out? Local writers? More articles, more substance, more opinions.
Think about it.
Whatever you do... don't read this.
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 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 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".
--
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
- Signal to noise ratio too low. Too many full page adds.
- The cheap paper/ink leads to black hands and sometime clothes.
- Major hassle dealing with build-up of old papers.
- Low on details. Most articles seem very superficial.
- Anything Important I already "know" more about then the paper has in print.
- Extreem local slant on sports coverage. (i.e. local team can do no wrong...)
- Very little technical news that is not insultingly dumbed down.
Now, to be fair... the problems with on-line newsFor me, the problems of the newspaper outway the problems with the net and thus prevent me from buying a paper for my house.
quack
Reading John's article, I was suprised at the high flaming rate. Of course I don't know american newspapers, but the dutch seem to grant a reasonable amount of space to tech-related topics. IT-stuff regularly makes it to the front page of the NRC Handelsblad or to the front page of the economics section. Once a weak, there is a dedicated page to electronical gadgets. At every week's science section, there is a lot of attention for tech stuff. So, as far as concerned the paper I'm reading, I don't see why newspapers are flamed so hard by John.
Added to this, I would like to recall the pro's of hardcopy news posters before me mentioned:
1. Newspapers come in a portable, handy format;
2. Newspapers (can) have high quality research and writing, because of journalism standards;
3. Newspapers more often contain high quality background articles, that you won't generally
find at your favorite news-site.
4. Newspapers are written for a broad audience, so you may find pieces that broading your view, whereas your web-site generally tries to narrow it.
5. Most of all, hard copy is better readible than those darned monitors.
Cheers,
Jeroen
PP: Slashdot seems to suffer from huge response delays today. De ping delay is only 85ms, without package loss. It the traffic getting too heavy?
Writing about music is like dancing about words - FZ
Well, have you ever killed fly on the wall with TV set or webpad/palmpilot ? Also when you run out of toilet paper, newspapers can be useful and TV/webpad not really :)
The media is, right now divided into two camps TV/internet and Newspapers.
- -------------------------------- --------------------------------
The TV and to a lesser extent internet media will tell you that a plane crashed ten minutes after it does. Now we know that a plane has crashed into the pacific, maybe where and maybe how many passengers were on board, but unless we watch the TV/update the page all night that is all we are going to know. And even if we do stay up all night we get your information in bits an pieces ("Here is a screaming parent, isn't this sad, what a tragedy, this is Dick from the beach near the Pacific"). In the morning we can wake up and get a newspaper with the summery and generally some kind of analysis.
I think the greatest difference is in the draw and audience (which are related). People are drawn to the TV and the internet for different reasons but invariably they want or expect entertainment. TV news knows especially that if they can hold you just a second longer by showing a screaming parent they may be able to get you to hold the channel through the commercials, or at least come back when they are over. The TV media then must produce a "show", the news has to be as good as the last movie you saw otherwise you are going to watch the last movie you saw, which very well may be on Cable.
Newspapers have to push, they have to make people want to read them, no one after a hard days work, is going to come home tired and think, "wow I'm sure glad I can turn on the newspaper". People who read newspapers do so actively, they have to make an effort to get one and PAY for it. For this reason newspapers tend to have a higher quality content (plenty don't, don't get me wrong).
The internet is the bastard child who hasn't quite got it figured out. You can find quality news on the web but it either has a tendency to update often or not at all. If one reads an article on a plane crash, at 10pm what are the odds that that person will read an article with the same or similar title and hour later? It may have been updated but that isn't necessarily going to get anyone to read it. And its still more of the CNN fluff that in-depth reporting. The Newspaper formatted site isn't quite what we are looking for. The internet media should take advantage of the huge groups of informed unwashed masses and use them to make/write news. Remind you of any sites you know?
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Do you ever feel like there are people watching you? You're not alone.
I listened to precisely this debate on CBC-Radio recently. They mentioned the web as an emerging information source, and even Slashdot as a new form of journalism. While I don't think they truly understand the issues, they did bring up a valid point about the web catering more and more to niche pockets allowing serious depth, and limiting breadth of knowledge.
Television news while current is usually limited to sound-bytes and sensationalized/drama-heightened coverage of "human-drama". There is little or no follow-up unless it is "Feel-Good" or sensational or got good ratings.
The web has flaws as well. The stories we read are incremental and related, but they are slowly building the large picture. Although I am interested in tech and tech issues, there is a distinct lack of the depth in other issues on the web. Usually just re-hashed newspaper and wire stories.
The future of newspaper, as I see it, is to fill in the holes left by the electronic media. They could compile and summarize the web stories that we watch build one slashdot post at a time. Or they could do the follow-up that TV never does, and get all sides of a story. it takes longer to get the story ready for print, but they have already lost the instant-breaking news race. One other suggestion is serials. No not serialz, serials in their comic/horoscope/tv section, have some soap-opera-like or thriller/mystery fiction.
That's a nice suggestion and all, but the papers would go through a huge culture shock trying to adjust, and probably lots of papers would fail and lose workers. But I guess if its a choice between reinvention and extinction, reinvention doesn't look too bad. - der fl8ermaus
Sure I read online news, but there is no way I would find out what was happening locally online.
:)
Besides, I spend too much time staring at a crt anyway.
Honestly though, I subscribe to the larger of the three local papers, I read the student paper at my university and sometimes the paper from the neighboring university, I listen to NPR, and occasionally watch CNN or Northwest Cable News on TV if I have time.
The critical factors are time and relavancy. Online data comes and goes and is often not archived. My schedule is such that I may not see the TV for a couple days in a row, but I can flip through the old newspaper to find out what exactly happened last week.
That being said, I often only have time to briefly skim the comics on a daily basis, I love odd information or just continued learning pieces, I like my hard news stories to have good hard leads because my time is limited, and I need to know what is happening (or has happened) locally.
The internet tells me many things, but almost never what I *need* to know. Slashdot is good for geek stuff...but it just fills a small nitch of my information needs.
As long as you keep the local papers running, and they tell me everything that happened locally, national things with local impact, and major national news items, I will continue to read the physical printed newspaper.
For me news papers are already dead. Living in the Twin Cities I have given up on the papers. Here are a few reasons why:
a) Political bias. In my oppinion a paper should NOT endorse a political canidate. For God's sake a paper is supposed to be unbiased. I would guess that 80% of the news papers out there today have a Liberal bias while the remainder have a Conservative bias. I don't want to spend my time reading the paper when all the "articles" are really nothing more than oppionion pages.
b) Spin control. I just recently had the oppertunity to read an article about the company I work for in a local paper. A good 50% of the article was down right ficticious. The writer apparently decided he wanted to write a highly possitive article about the company with little regard for the truth. He painted the company nicely, but it wasn't news and it certainly wasn't the truth. Strangely the truth was not all that bad, it is strange that the article contained so little of it.
c) Fabrication. Considering how some writers like to spin their articles, I feel you really cannot trust the content of a paper. I don't believe you can trust the net at face value either, but at least you have more options available on a story by story basis that makes it easier to get the differing sides of the story. Take the DVD reporting for example. How many articles have described DeCSS as a copying utility rather than a decryption mechanism necessary for watching DVD's?
Rest in peace papers.
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.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Printed words on paper will always be with us . I have not lately tried to haul my pc into the bathroom and I sure as hell would not read anything like a book off of a computer
I like good newspapers, but there aren't many. I like the newspaper here in Baton Rouge, and I do read it. I hated the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and specifically did not read it when I lived in Atlanta.
Believe it or not, one thing I like about newspapers is the fact that they're not immediate. Sometimes I like to read about things that didn't happen five minutes ago, but two days ago, or two weeks ago. History can't be understood merely by looking at it from a distance of two inches; like a skyscraper, or an elephant, one needs to get not only close to it, but far away from it, to understand it completely. Newspapers provide one with an important, and useful, day-or-two-old perspective.
I don't think papers will go away. If "immediate media" could destroy them, it already would have, because radio and television are, like the net, forms of immediate media. They're "push" systems; the Web is a "pull" system. Both have their uses, and both are fairly immediate; if immediacy was enough to invalidate newspapers, they would have begun to die forty years ago.
Granted, the presence of other media will certainly diminish the market share of newspapers; that stands to reason. But will they go away? I don't think so. Even weekly newsmagazines have their purpose; I subscribe to the Economist, myself, which is where I get my world news, and I also read National Review, when I'm over at my parents' house. :)
Newspapers are not dead; they are just assuming a new role. There are things that papers still do that other sources cannot (or do not). Likewise, there are things papers used to do but cannot do anymore.
First, there are a few problems with the Internet as a news source in general. Content is a big issue, format is another, and ease of use is yet another.
1) There is content on the Internet, nobody denies that. However, organization leaves much to be desired. When I visit a site such as CNN.com, I get news bytes. The stories are at most 4 paragraphs long and tell me only the bare minimum I need to know to have a casual "Oh, you hear that Bush lost Michigan" type conversation. It really tells me nothing else. Other sites are much better on content, but as of yet the Internet is not the prime medium for long and informative articles. A paper will provide a broad range of issues and topics in an easy to use package. I can skim easily and pick out the articles I'm interested in and read them quickly. With internet news sources, I can't do that as well. What is needed for the internet to become truly useful as a complete news source is a personal digital assistant (a software one, not a Palm) in the true sense of Nicholas Negroponte's Being Digital. One that will search for my interests and collate and organize the articles I wish to see into one easy to read format. Its too much trouble to search out all the news I want in the depth I want by myself. If there was someone or something to do it for me, and most likely it will be a computer, then the Internet as a news medium finally achieves full potential.
2) Newspapers are easier to use. I open up a newspaper and all the information I need is right there in front of me. I don't eat breakfast in front of my computer with a hand on the mouse, I eat it at a table with a newspaper. The day Palm Pilots get 20 inch screens and are 5mm thick is the day I will start reading real news on computers, albeit still at the table. It is so much simpler to turn a page than to scroll down to find the "Next" button. Besides, I don't have to connect to my ISP first, and since I don't have an ISDN/Cable/xDSL connection, loading all those pages with graphics can be very slow, much slower than reaching down and turning a page.
3) Newspapers fill a certain purpose. I read CNN.com for quick news and headlines. I read newpapers for the bigger picture. But if I'm really interested in a topic, I read The Economist. Because most internet news sources have so little information, and becasue I rarely sit at my computer for 24 hours a day, newspapers provide me with the maximum information at the maximum ease. Besides, they give me the more news. I'm interested in the news I want, not a 1 paragraph summary of it.
Newspapers haven't died, they've just changed focus. Its not that there isn't the possibility of death, in fact I think its inevitable, its just that there isn't any medium that can fully supplant them yet. No one medium has all the qualities and good points of newspapers rolled into one, and until that happens, I will continue to read my newspaper.
Dandan.at.bigw.dot.org
As my grandpa would say, "It ain't fit to wrap fish in."
I guess local content is about all they have going for them but the management is a bunch of old fogeys and fuddie-duddies.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
I've found the on-line only sites to have better news than the `real journalists'. The advantage that the media had in the past was that they got the news *first*. With the internet, that isn't true anymore. (As an example, I was able to read the Finding of Fact before there was even a single news story written about it in the on-line press.)
I do read the paper but only the Sunday.
You can't beat the funnies. It's just not the same looking at them on the web.
I don't watch the local news, TV rots your brain (except for Letterman...and the tick...and maybe inside edition, blah), and the sunday paper gives me a chance to catch up. Althought I get sick of the Red Hat articles (yea I'm from the RTP...well Apex)
Everybody loves Parade magizine........right
May your soul reach heaven before the devil realizes you are dead
Though I didn't read this article, I will happily answer the question... I have stopped subscribing to newspapers for many reasons. The three MOST important are: (1) The information contained in most city papers is either depressing or useless. And, when I actually stopped to think about it, I discovered that I RARELY find any valuable information in the paper at all. Yeah, I can sit at the breakfast table and read about the latest carjacking or political sting...but I can get the same information for free from TV highlights. However, there is the argument of keeping up-to-date on local events...but with all the negativity in the papers...why would I want to concentrate on all that kind of crap anyway. All it does is bring me down. Besides, I am not really interested in why some loser is perpetrating a horrendous crime spree. I have better things to concern myself with. So, accept for anything short of LOCALIZED want ads...there is no real need for me to subscribe. (2) Why would I want yesterdays news today? EXAMPLE: I used to be an avid subscriber to the Wall Street Journal...however, I get better data online and FASTER. The information is as close to real time as I could possibly need...newspapers can't touch that ideal at all. (3) Environmentally speaking, I can feel good about all the paper I am NOT wasting by subscribing to a newspaper. In summary... My personal overall BIGGEST problem is the medias constant desire to focus on the negative. In fact, I personally think that if we (as a people) tried to concetration on the GOOD things in life more often...things just MIGHT seem to get BETTER. ...just an opinion.
Each section needs a list of what's contained within on the front with a few lines summarizing each section.
There needs to be more of a focus on local news or something otherwise rare/unavailable online.
Feedback is nice; letters to the editor don't compare with what we get on Slash. Most papers really need a supporting site.
The spew of circulars pouring out of the back of the paper is annoying as well. Advertising should be more strategically located in appropriate sections. (And personal opinion is that it should remain on nicely recyclable newsprint instead of the glossy tree murder stock.)
And lastly... most of us are substantially more cynical than our parents. We see straight through reporting with a heavy tilt, and frankly, it pisses us off. Save your opinions and biased modifiers for the editorial page.
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.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Newspapers are too big. The sheets of paper are too hard to manipulate. They should be half to three quarters size.
I can list three things which have allowed me to let the subscription to my local paper lapse.
A notable exception to these complaints is the St. Petersburg Times (Florida), which has a suitable mix of topics, opinion, depth, and local emphasis to suit my taste. I'm sure there are large national papers I would find equally appealing (NY Times, Chicago Tribune, etc.)
I left my sig in my other pants.
The only real use I have for a newspaper is searching the local want-ads. Well, that and lining my hampster cage...
Newspapers don't ask me to "register" and then when I decline, change their presentation format to a less convenient one for those not registered in an attempt to coerce them into relenting.
Newspapers are more reliable than slashdot as regards "up time".
The spelling and usage of the language in newspapers doesn't cause me to wince nearly as often as do those of /.
Newspapers generally do a better job of covering their turf than does /.
On the down-side: I don't know as I've seen any coverage of Naked and Petrified Natale Portman, the pleasures of hot grits down the front of ones pants, or anything from !MEEPT! in the newspapers.
So I guess it's a wash.
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.
Is it too late?
Yes, without radical change it's too late for me personally to get interested in newspapers, with the possible exception of the WSJ or Clarinet, which both cost more than I want to pay.
Do any of you read newspapers?
Virtually never. I read the BBC online. It sometimes gives a less distorted view of America than you can get out of any US national media (aside from, perhaps, Z Magazine).
Do you see a future for them?
Not without radical change. I also really have a hard time with the usage of paper for this purpose. It would have to be an extremely worthwhile paper with very little advertising for me to justify the waste. I'd rather pay a small fee for online access.
Is there anything they could do that would make you want to subscribe to and read them, either in hard copy or online form?
Real reporting from reporters who think outside the Corporate Box would make a big difference. But that's probably impossible for most of these institutions because they are owned by and implicitly subservient to the interests of Private Power. Do truly independent reporting that is not deferent to corporate (or *any other*) power and I'll buy your paper. This is a tall order and would piss off a whole lot of people who believe that newspapers are "upstanding citizens", but it's what we need. I'm not asking for "leftist" reporting. Just the damned truth. Starting with the real dirt on US involvement in East Timor, Columbia, Kosovo and Iraq. Not the government / military / corporate line. Report on the facts and use them to draw reasonable conclusions that don't reference mass-media created pop-culture jingoism. It's all about facts and objectivity. Then start telling us about what's really been going on in this country for the past 20 years. What is the real agenda of the WTO/MAI/GATT/NAFTA? Who are the actual individuals behind these things? You see, it's really easy to ask hard questions. It's much harder to have the guts to answer them. On the other hand, maybe a really nice color Dilbert foldout is about as much guts as newspapers have left (not REPORTERS... NEWSPAPERS).
I think that newspapers have a valid role in the community, and that being said, I think that the community factor of a newspaper will become more and more important and centralized on once the newspaper industry realizes that they can't possibly keep up with the web or internet news resources.
That being said they will most likely continue reporting the news (I know of soo many people that just read the news paper and watch the news, they press will be forced to maintain their classic role as national/world news provider), but will start adapting like most other businesses that are threatened by globalization: they will concentrate all their resources on what's happening locally, either nationally, regionally or within their home city.
Cheers,
Chris
-- Humans, because the hardware IS the software.
I read the newspaper every day and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. In any case, reading the newspaper and slashdot positively reinforce one another. In other words, the more reading online leads to more reading offline. Put another way, I don't read any books anymore w/o reading the "real people" reviews at amazon (anyone notice the Kirkus reviews blows goats).
On the other hand, tv time is *screwed* by online time.
Slashdot IS my newspaper. I generally have a browser window open to it all day long and just refresh it periodically. Even got my wife hooked on reading it and she's not anywhere near being a geek (that was a compliment, really hon...). I have a few years on Cmdr. Taco, et.al. but they seem to be interested in the same things I am.
The local newspaper is run by a chain (aren't they all and doesn't it feel like it?). It's on a par with the Enquirer (on a good day). We have two local versions of Bill Gates who pretty much dictate the slant of the local news.
For national news I listen to NPR on the drive home and catch CNN occasionally.
It's generally easier, faster, more accurate and less "moderated" to check Slashdot to see what's happening in the real world.
"If you can keep your head while all those around you are loing theirs, you've obviously misunderstood the situation." Daniel Keys Moran - The Long Run (quoting H.S. Thompson?)
Newspapers can survive, even (especially!!!!!) local papers, but only if they eschew oldthink...
Your Working Boy,
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?
- I've tired of the general left-liberal slant that seems to have infested the dominant media culture. Even the so-called "conservative-leaning" publications are, IMO, rabidly liberal. (No, I'm not a conservative.) I've a good friend with a Journalism Degree and several years in the business, that has since found another career, who would prefer not to be reminded of her past association with the field of journalism. Too embarrassing. Can't say as I blame her.
- Find a newspaper delivery person who can relatively consistently deliver a dry newspaper to me, and even then I might re-consider.
I really miss my Saturday and Sunday mornings with the papers (yes, plural), in particular. But between items 1 & 2, above, I found I could no longer in good conscience justify paying for a newspaper.The longer I do without newspaper delivery, the less I miss it.
I see
Newspapers have several advantages over other media: they can be read anywhere, without batteries, in bright sun. They can be tossed when done. You can download the information (i.e. buy a paper) with no effort and little money almost anywhere. They are the ultimate portable information source.
Except that they lack information. Newspaper writers tend to be trying to change the world, not merely reporting on it. The articles are very strongly biased, the editorials more so, and the information shallow. Of course the highly-educated well-connected techies won't read them, while they continue to have the same amount of content as a typical usenet group.
If they really want to fix the problem, they would first start screening out all opinion. Then they would add deeper research into the stories and provide more information. Provide URLs at the end of each story where we can go for more information. Let the newspaper be our portal.
Lastly, Jon foolishly attacks newspapers for their lack of graphics. The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times are doing fine with minimal graphics. So is Slashdot. Heck, see many graphics on this page? Jon, get a clue - most of us can read and don't need pretty pictures for information disemmination. Sometimes they help, but what picture or graphic would, for example, improve the comprehension of this story?
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
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
I don't get a newspaper every day, or even every week. When I do buy a paper, it's usually a Sunday.
Sometimes I get one because I want to know what's on sale at the local retailers.
I have a friend who gets a paper just for the coupons.
But most of the time, I'm getting it just for the paper itself. It's a relatively inexpensive dropcloth, and a recylclable packing material. And how else could you teach a little kid about paper mache?
Hi, I haven't read a paper in a while. I do read them on line from time to time. I used to buy them every now and then but never every day, after a while if one doesn't throw them out then you can really see a huge pile developing. This is a real waste of resources, I suppose that's why I prefer the on line versions. When I read the ones on-line I look at only 4 sections (headlines, local, world and sport ) but that is just my style of reading. Here in Ireland some of the papers are getting together to produce a web site for news http://www.unison.ie/ which I think is a good idea. For tech stuff I use news.com and slashdot ( open all the time ), dotcomma, nerdperfect.
You bring up a great point in this article. Newspapers have lost a great many of their potential readers (young people who might actually care) due to their lack of reporting what they want to know. They continue to report what they think the older generation wants to know and ignore those of us who will be their major source of readers in the future. I find myself going to an online news site to catch up on the latest because, first of all, its easier for me, and second of all, I don't have to wait until tomorrow to find out what went on today. Newspapers seem to think that the new technology is no match for the past glory of newspapers and the fact they were once the authoritative voice on the news. Times have changed, and so have the readers. It is admirable to see some of the major newspapers with an on-line edition (many of which are offering free memberships... :) and this is the wave of the future. Those 'papers that don't understand this are going to be finding themselves as an icon of the past if they don't start catching up.
Everytime Katz posts, a bunch of people rush to post about how much they hate him.
We've all heard it, and we don't care any more. You've made your points. Stop talking about him, and start talking about what he's saying.
Devilled Eggs - A disturbing little creation of mine.
How about regularly running the complete text of political speeches and debates?
Not what some analyst thinks it meant, not the sound bites, but the actual, entire text start to finish. I know some papers do that from time to time, but as a regular thing, that would be great.
Our secret is gamma-irradiated cow manure
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We apologize for the inconvenience.
Newspapers definately have a place. They provide current information as well as serving as a historical record for their city and/or community. Unfortunately in most communities, the newpapers are monolithic and stagnant. Making any changes is next to impossible.
That said, if one were to conceive of a perfect newspaper, heres my take:
1) Index the thing. Devote a third of each section's front page to an index of ALL the stories in the section. Put a small add on the side of this index and charge a mint for it.
2) News feeds are nice, why not embellish them with detail. I have quick and easy access to the AP, Bloomberg, Reuters and other feeds from my computer, free of charge. By the time I get the morning paper, it's likely I've already read half the stories. Why not pull in info from other sources or original reporting to fill in the detail. Use the wire stories as a framing device. If a plane crashes, show us the profile of that type of plane and some brief technical details. How many passengers does it hold, who uses them. If a world figure is assasinated. Show us where the coutry is located, some general info about the country and tell us why this could effect our lives.
3) Use the web as an extension. If I subscribe to the daily paper, let me get the stories online too. Provide <b>moderated</b> discussions associated with stories.
4) Hire more local columnists.
Of course I have hundreds of other ideas, but what is the point. Most papers have too much history to change or enhanse their formats. That's why all I can say is good luck and thanks for wrapping all the fish.
The "geek" and "nerd" population is a minority in the American News Audience. While it may seem that there are more people with technical degrees and working in technical fields than ever before, the largest component of the population is still people born shortly after World War II. These folks have different tastes as far as how they get their news, how it is presented, and what is on the front page.
As for Monica Lewinsky, the geek/nerd constituent is apathetic. Yes, Silicon Valley feels disconnected from the White House. This is our own fault -- the "head in the sand" approach does not affect our political engine -- it merely gives the Meat and Potatoes folks a larger segment of the vote.
Many newspapers are publishing their papers on the web, verbatim. This is their initial response to the proliferation of computer networks. Lets see the effort continue with clued coverage of technology. What we don't need is the junk that cable news networks and broadcasting companies are putting on the web under the auspices of "fast reporting". Some of these sites should get an award for "best investigative paragraph".
Affect the news industry with your money and your vote. This is all you can do. Most of us do neither.
The main problem I have with the largest local newspaper, the Newark (New Jersey) Star Ledger, is that it has become a real rag. The headlines are so strongly slanted that they insult my intelligence, and the articles aren't so hot, either. One recent article bemoaned the large number of people in jail in the US, and their first example was someone who beat and robbed an old lady. Why the hell am I supposed to sympathize with a scumbag like that? Let the bastard rot. The only decent paper around is the Wall Street Journal, which does its best to give people on both sides of an issue a fair chance to be heard. --- Brian
I read the San Jose Mercury News on paper nearly every morning. I find it pretty decent in most respects, and given that I don't pay that much attention to the news in the late evening, it often _does_ report things I don't know, or at least in more depth than I previously knew.
But of course, the Merc is available completely online, including the comics. But it takes a lot longer to download & skim the articles online; with the paper, I can skim the front page, skim the comics (which take _forever_ to download online), skim the sports section, etc.
It's just a matter of speed, really. I certainly check online news sources through the day, but it's much easier to eat breakfast with a newspaper at my side than with my laptop.
Adam
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
Old newspapers make great - Salami warp - Painter hats - Origami planes - Glass cleaners (true!)
- ~wandie
The reason why I don't read newspapers is the same reason I don't watch TV news, or listen to the radio, or read news magazines. They all are very biased reports. Rather than reporting just facts too many reporters add their opinion. That's fine for an op ed piece but not when I'm reading the news. Also, they all follow trends that are duplicated over and over and over with really no value to what is being reported. A lil Monica anyone.
I stick to reading the AP wire. It seems to have less opinion and more fact and I'm able to discern more clearly the facts of a story. But even that is skewed in the sense of what is being reported. Each news item I look at I ask myself a few questions: 1. What are the facts of the story? 2. Did the story tell me how something occurred based on facts or are those blanks just being filled by supposition? 3. Did the title of the article really capture what the article is about or was it just something flashy do get me to read the article? 4. Is the article giving an opinion of the editor, reporter, publisher? 5. Is the story just plan sensationalistic and more to provoke an emotional reaction?
For you newspapers guys look at Columbine. Rather than reporting the facts or verifying eyewitnesses facts (since no two people perceive the samething) or even truly just reporting - you go into areas of discussion. See those kids that shot up a school were dangerous because they play violent video games. Or we have to save our children from goths because they are different.
To me stories like lose credibility for the simple fact that the reports are trying to place blame or figure out why something happened when in reality there is no why did this happen. Blame can be placed on anyone and reporters seem to love to place blame but to me it just echoes the days of yellow journalism and Randolph Hearst. So why believe them?
Save Pangaea!! Stop Continental Drift!!
I'm interested in the question, "Is there a future for newspapers?" I subscribed (from California, Texas and Oregon) to the NYTimes for decades. Now I subscribe to The Economist.
I used to use local papers for shopping (housing, cars, appliances, etc). Filtering through ads placed by dealers and agents was a pain, but it was the only way to shop. Now I use the net or go to the agents and dealers themselves.
At work (Portland State University) the local paper (The Oregonian) is important. It is the standard we use to understand what "the community" thinks about. It is not a source of news for me. It documents the boundary between what we talk about and know amongst ourselves and what is widely known and discussed.
This morning, I brought up my ppp connection to see if there was any public mention of an important board meeting at OGI (The Oregon Graduate Institute) yesterday. I didn't find anything.
When I was subscribing to the NYTimes I used to wish for a good local weekly that would cover local politics and events in depth. I have never seen such a paper anywhere. I don't know how such a paper could make money since I wouldn't use its advertizing for shopping.
Doesn't matter if it's magazines or newspapers or whatever.
Also, I like getting my overview online but when I want details I like having the paper right in front of me and not feel the pressure to get offline (is someone trying to call?) I like reading longer stuff offline.
I would like newspapers even more if they would be more original. I get the SF Chronicle and NY Times and they contain many of the same articles. On an important topic, I want multiple perspectives. Just because we have a system that allows diverse perspectives doesn't mean we get it, and this is very dangerous.
I have home delivery of the NYTimes, both in print & by email. I especially enjoy the way the online version allows me to email interesting articles to friends.
I also "consult" numerous online news sources including online versions of newspapers in other cities.
One way I have not evolved is that I usually print the articles to read them. For my 50+ eyes, the higher resolution of paper, not to mention the portability are much preferable to the CRT.
Hopefully in the not-to-distant-future, I will have a high resolution portable "viewer" ( powered by a tranmeta CPU *grin* ) which will replace paper for my reading pleasure.
One major difference I see is that ALL newspapers will be increasingly in competition with one another for my attention.
Yes, I still read our local newspaper on paper. However, the discussion seems to address the relevancy of reading the "news" on paper and the content provided by traditional newspaper companies.
Reading the "paper" still makes sense for me because I find the paper portable and requires no special equipment to read it.
The larger issue is what content should news organizations provide readers to stay alive. I read our local newspapers both on paper and online. The reasons are local news, time for thoughtful, researched writing, and editorial review. The first two reasons I really care about.
Perhaps, newspapers could stay in business by focusing on a regional audience by providing in-depth stories that matter to them. For example, I live in an area where development is gobbling up open space. I always read could articles about local development issues: politics, real estate, new building plans, etc. I think "in-depth" is an important component. I almost never get my news from commercial TV or radio, because NPR does a great job covering a story's depth while commerical TV glosses it over. This implies hiring writers who are experts about their subject areas.
A lot of comments on newspaper content, but not much on how newspaper distribution can change. How about a PC program that downloads and prints out newspaper content every morning at a pre-set time? The user could select what content they wanted and grab it off the printer for their morning coffee/breakfast/commute, and the paper could target adds to the reader's demographics. An alternative would be to automatically load it into a Palm or other electronic reader. Also, the information could be up to date at the time it's printed out. The paper someone prints out at 8am could be more up to date than the paper someone else printed out at 5am (traffic info? weather updates? school closings?). And of course, readers could log into the website later in the day to get more in depth info.
Of course, someone would have to figure out how to reformat the newspaper so that it flows well on 8 1/2 x 11 paper, or on a Palm screen. But I think this could work.
Any other suggestions?
-jimbo
"Hold me Bob!" "I would if I could man!" -Larry and Bob in VeggieTales
The problem with the American news media can be summed up quite simply: excessive concentration of ownership. The fact is that five mega-conglomerates control 95% of the American news media - both print and televised.
If we define power in the information age as the ability to control the flow of information, then this fact should be of concern to all who wish to read news, rather than slanted corporate propaganda.
Ralph Nader provides a wealth of evidence that shows that corporate crime in America dwarfs all other crime. The cost of corporate crime is estimated by Nader to cost America 10 to 20 billion dollars per year! Now, ask youself this question: When was the last time that you opened your newspaper or flipped on your television set to hear news about corporate crime? This is proof positive that the media filter is used to protect the owners of the news media, not to inform the American public. This is why you should turn off your television, and discontinue your newpaper subscription. Nothing will send a message to the corporate owners of the propaganda press faster than the loss your business, and trust.
The internet provides a much needed corporate media alternative. All slashdoter's should support the growth of this new media. It's our best hope for an end the total domination of our air and print media by forces who use that media to manipulate, inculcate, and dominate, rather and inform the general public.
I still read the local paper almost every day. I live in a small town, and the local paper is the best source of local news. There is one local television station, but they don't have the time to cover very much material. There are no local radio staions that provide satisfactory news coverage. Our local paper, however, does a pretty fine job of covering local issues. I'd say that our paper's future is pretty secure, at least for the near-to-midrange future.
Here at work, we get the local paper (Rochester NY, Democrat and Chronicle) every weekday. Every day, during lunch, I read the funnies, a column by a local writer (Dick Dougherty, who is an excellent writer, IMHO) the editorial/opinion pages, the sports highlights, and the business section, in that order. I always read Dave Barry on mondays, and occasionally scan the other sections for interesting bits, but that's my general routine.
:)
The reasons why I like the newpaper better than TV news shows is that I can find information when I'm looking for it. I don't have to wait until 11:15 for weather news, I can find out who won the primary just by looking in the correct section. As for being better than news on the web, there are many reasons, not the least of which is the fact that its nice to be able to have it in the same space I am. I like having the physical properties of the newspaper. Other reasons include: Lack of information overload, all important information is included in an article because the newspeople cannot simply "link" to an article elsewhere; Information only in informative articles, opinions in editorial pages; I've never had to wait for a page to load
Plus, the pages are local information. The articles can be from non-local sources, but the information is always prioitized locally. The heat wave in California may be of higher global priority, but the 100 inches of snow that went up from 90 a week ago has a much higher local priority. The local telephone area code split is not even a footnote for the rest of the world, but here is a huge issue.
I read tech news on the net. I occasionally watch news on TV for latest information. But most of my news comes from the newspaper. This may change, if news orginizations move papers onto the web, but this certainly does not eliminate the need for local reporting, editing, etc. And I still think many people like the news in paper format.
>>>>>>>>> Kvort the Duck
-Don't mind me, I'm personality-deficient and mentally-impaired.
E.g. stories last weekend about hackers "breaking into" Yahoo's computers.
E.g. coverage of the radiation leak at the nuclear fuel processing plant in Japan. The front page article in this self-proclaimed "newspaper of record" kept mixing up radiation dose with dose rate. They used the wrong units for the dose. They mixed up release of radiation (gammas and neutrons) with release of radioactive isotopes. Obviously all the details were not yet known about the accident when they went to press, but this is no excuse for publishing a mixture of gibberish and errors.
E.g. an article on mountaineering that said that at high altitudes climbers' blood becomes "ketchup-like", using this phrase more than 10 times. It becomes viscous, which is not synonymous with "ketchup-like". If climbers' blood turned to boiled tomatoes with high fructose corn syrup and red dye #2 then they would really be in a heap o' trouble.
If I cannot trust a newspaper to deliver accurate information, it is not worth reading.
Except to wonder why right-wing nuts like William Safire and ditzes like Maureen Dowd get to write regular columns. Paul Krugman, who just got a regular column, is a genius though.
Mr. Katz reveals his parochialism. "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." No, they are immune to the graphic design idiocy that plagues the web. The large page size and resolution allows them to use type size, rules, sidebars making them much more readable than online news pages I have seen.
"Newspapers are still mired in anti-deluvian and phobic notions about technology." ANTIDELUVIAN, before the deluge. Given the difference between the meanings of ante- and anti-, I don't see how anyone who knew what the word means could misspell it that way.
I have given up on my local papers, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in particular. And, to a lessor extent, television news broadcasts.
I have found them to be, at best, a poor, crude attempt at human engineering on a vast scale. These sources of "news" rarely report the truth. Rather, they report the truth as viewed from a particularly oblique angle. An angle that offers financial gain for folks in power, usually at the expense of people like me.
Consider the sales-tax hike that was proposed some years ago. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette devoted half their cover page to an editorial in favor of this unpopular tax. There was no coverage at all of the small businesses that would have been unable to compete, and would have been forced, financially, to relocate out of Allegheny county because of this tax. Which the people, thankfully, in spite of the press, voted down.
Lately, it seems whenever there's an accident, there's some ghoul there shoving a camera in someone's face saying "How does it feel to have just watched your daughter die?" Why the hell would I, or anyone else, want to watch that?
Then there's the little matter of the fact that every, and I mean EVERY news story that I've ever read, and that I've also had firsthand knowledge, or even secondhand knowledge of, the press has gotten it completely WRONG. They have warped the truth, sometimes nearly beyond recognition, frequently hurting the very people who went to them for help, all in the name of the almighty dollar.
Web sites like slashdot succeed because everyone is free to say whatever they want. This philosophy is incompatible with slanting the truth to turn a fast buck. As a result, slashdot airs the whole truth where others fail.
I'd never really thought about it before... every once in awhile I pick up a USA Today, but the past few times I'd already heard the news hours earlier. I don't think its mostly due to the web, its due to the fact that as a fact-loving hound, there are so many other ways to get information. The web, mailing lists, and especially talk radio.
If I want to know what is going to be on the news tomorrow, I check the Associated Press web pages and the breaking news section.
Also, another problem I personally have with newspapers is portability... they're huge! All I need to carry around talk radio is an extremely small radio (for when I'm not in the car). All I need to interact with Slashdot.org is fingers and knowing my password - computers are everywhere I go (college, work, home, friend's places). But to carry around a newspaper without mangling it it tough, I can't jam it in my backpack, I can't keep it in the pockets of my trenchcoat, I basically have to carry it around in my hands... and then I'm covered with ink. Blah.
As for the argument for local stuff, around here the local talk radio stations are nothing but local until noon when the national shows start...
Esperandi
...they were delivered to my door for free. I used to read a newspaper during my lunch break at work, but now that I'm in college, I generally don't get a chance to sit down and do that until late in the evening. By then, I'm either tied up at the computer, doing homework, or just trying to relax.
If I really wanted to read a paper, my campus library (or local library) has copies I can read for free. Admittedly, that's not as nice as sitting at your dinner table with a cup of tea/coffee/soda and just relaxing at the end of the day, but I also can't justify paying for something I won't necessarily get to use when it comes to my door every day.
Now, once I'm out of college, with a regular job, I may start subscribing to one again. Why? As some others have pointed out, local papers cover things that you won't hear about online or in national papers. And national papers also carry AP Newswire verified information, usually with more in-depth reporting than a web article, which has to be up fast to beat the other news sites to the punch.
I don't actually see newspapers dying until someone makes a magazine sized PDA with a hi-res color screen and decent storage/battery life for less than the cost of a yearly subscription. The best way to distribute such electronic newspapers/magazines, would probably be in the new WebBuy PDF format, in which you have to purchase an unlock code for your document. You could download today's edition just by plugging the reader into a phone jack and hitting a button, and your code is embedded into the reader. When you pay for your X weeks/months subscription, the code in their database is made valid, and when it expires, the code is made invalid.
Until that happens (and probably for a while after that even), newspapers will survive.
____________________
Tension, apprehension
And dissension have begun
I believe newspapers have a different role relative to TV, internet. I read newspaper, I always have -- inspite of TV. In fact I found most local US newspapers (chicago tribune in my case) so pathetic that I had to switch to NY Times to satisfy the need for awareness of the world. Back home, we used to get 3 newspapers daily in 2 different languages. But in US only thing that stops me doing that is lack of 'good' newspapers.
In a newspaper:
- I don't care for the sensational.
- I don't care for illinformed columnists (very common).
- I don't care for latest news.
I expect a good newspaper to give me detailed, insightful coverage of events. I can get breaking news from CNN! (TV/online) But I do not ever get what i want there!.Breadth of issues, some of them in depth.
I guess I am an info-junkie.
I also visit Nature Update (nature.com) for authentic laymen's introduction to new research. I scan Wired, salon, MIT-TR, National Geographic... I scan few newspapers online, through Yahoo! mostly. I go through many magazines online.
Still, I need a newspaper. Has anyone tried to sip morning coffee (or tea) with news online ? You need a newspaper to give you that daily insightful coverage. Most people do not like reading long articles online (i don't). So you expect daily newspaper to do that.
Some of my friends need newspaper for daily pot-ritual (i mean natural I/O not the drug).
On providing PDA downloads
When I am commuting, I also save some articles from online media on my Palm Pilot, for later reading. Only naive readers need 'download your news in Palm format' option. Most experienced people will take plain text and create their own PRC, I do.
How many people can read Greenspan's entire speech online, watch it on TV. Slashdot is good for discussing issues, but a coherent insightful coverage? not always possible.
-ak
ps: I am a perennial Katz critic. I think Jon has learnt from
Local Papers are commonly biased in their reporting. Online papers are too. The advantage with online papers is that you can either find one that matches your bias or compare and contrast in an effort to find the truth. Papers from a foreign country are extremely important, as they'll allow you a perspective on your own country that is impossible to get from non-imported print media.
The process of printing means the news is old (by modern standards) by the time I read it. Why would I want to read old news? (Or as Wired put it a few years ago, "Wired is Tired.")
I live in Omaha. The paper used to be close to useless due to biased content, however they have adapted nicely. I can search and find news articles and, more importantly, search the classifieds. The last one makes my ad much more valuable and it makes looking for an item or a job much easier. If I want an exercise bike, I can search a few weeks of newspapers quickly and easily.
I'll read the newsmagazines (such as Time and Newsweek) when someone can convince me they've started to put out issues without faked photos and with accurate content. The last few times I looked at one they were covering Columbine and the Seattle W.T.O. events. The bias and partial coverage of the events in their reporting made the article worthless.
If print news wants to compete with online news they must base themselves off of the two advantages they have over the online community. Those advantages are portability and locality. This means that they need to quit paying for news feeds (a.p., etc.), improve local editorials and news articles, and decrease the size and cost of the paper. In addition, an online mirror (as described above) has its uses, especially for classifieds. Finally, there are services a paper can do well that the internet doesn't. Comics, crosswords, and Advice columns (bathroom reading) are still better in papers than online. Expand your comics/crossword section. Cover local sports and local politics heavily. Contain content aimed at your entire community. Contain editorials that are controversial.
Newspapers have long held an effective monopoly in many areas. They have grown weak and really are not good at dealing with competition. Some papers are wonderful, but many are utter drek.
Realize that many local news teams have used humor to stay sucessful. Consider it.
News is news. It is a list of the facts regarding a situation. They should not contain opinions. Editorials are editorials. They are opinions that contain news as a basis for the opinions. John Katz writes editorials that use news as support. (good). Taco writes news that contains editorials (bad). If newspapers could learn to remove bias and sensationalism from their reporting they would do a lot better. (And if they think we don't see it then their only blinding themselves.)
A friend of mine has gone out on a camera crew with the Daily Show. The method is simple. Interview someone for 2 to three hours and throw in a really oddball question after the first hour or so and every half hour after that. The person doesn't realize that the whole purpose of the interview is the few odd questions so they do their best to answer them and end up looking like an idiot. What's sad is that it seems that the real news does much the same thing. They blow rolls of film, including a number of staged shots for many articles. As a result, we've grown used to it and it has ceased to have an impact on us. Papers do it. We know they do it. We've seen them do it. Therefore we cease to trust them. Why would I pay to read news I don't trust?
-----
No Zen is good zen
It is most definitely true that newspapers are pathetic as a source for (inter)national "breaking news". I also agree very much with the assertion that their depth of reporting on many issues is incredibly shallow. There is an important reason for this, though. Most newspapers (the exceptions being the big ol' dinosaurs like the New York Times) do not have correspondents all over the country and the world looking for news. Stories from outside the local area are simply picked up from wire services like Reuters or the Associated Press. Stories about local issues are entirely done on their own. This is where newspapers still have great value.
What many young people fail to realize is that these local issues are the ones that most effect their quality of life. What's going on with the school board, the city council, or the state water commissioner is going to determine far more about your daily existence than much of what happens in D.C. or London or Beijing (this is, of course, why the American public thought the whole Monica thing was ridiculous...the President diddling an intern didn't effect their lives one bit). For this reason, newspapers provide an invaluable source for news that really does matter, even though it's less glamorous than a plane crash or an ethnic conflict. You just won't find that news anywhere else at this point.
This does bring up other issues. For example, local TV stations provide local news, and this is an issue that newspapers must deal with. However, newspapers have the advantage in this case because they can provide much more information about a story than a 3-minute TV segment.
Finally, no other technology gives the mobility and convenience of a newspaper. I can not sit down for lunch somewhere, pull my laptop out of my briefcase, and expect to read the day's news without either using expensive equipment or downloading it all earlier (which would negate any advantage over a paper, wouldn't it?). Not to mention that a month's subscription to a newspaper costs about the same as internet access, and a computer isn't required. For lots of people it's much more feasible.
Your editorials usually don't tell us anything new.
Many people criticize your writing style.
You keep asking the same questions, and advocating the same positions over and over.
Your editorials are graphically impared.
Is it too late? Do any of you read John Katz Editorials? Do you see a future for them? Is there anything they could do that would make you want to subscribe to and read them, either in hard copy or online form?
What do you think?
Your password has expired, please login to change it.
Hoaxing the news is a fun hobby, but in a way it's like shooting fish in a barrel. Complicated and proud doctrines of journalistic ethics don't save reporters from breaking the one important rule of journalism: Don't talk big shit about stuff you don't know anything about.
I have a rule I've developed for evaluating newspaper stories, and it almost never fails:
Reporters can't be experts on everything, and they can't even be very good reporters from the looks of things. So a reporter who wants to succeed quickly has to learn how to spackle over the available facts with a plausable narrative that flows smoothly with folk psychology and consensus reality.
What comes out the end of this process is competent, professional crap. It doesn't allow us a window on the world, but only a nonconfrontational mirror of our own preconceptions.
You can get as much value from swapping urban legends.
Quiquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
The dogma of journalism is to "be objective". I think that is the
death of intelligent discussion. Either something affects your life
or it doesn't (a little extremism here, but bear with me).
If something affects your life, you are going to report it in a way
that you think about it. No matter how hard you try to present both
sides, your biases will come through. This is a good thing if I
understand who you are and what those biases are. Slashdot is built
on the strength of people writing about what they care about.
If something does not affect you, then you don't know how to sniff out
the bull from your information sources. Most stories start out with
someone wanting something to be made public. The people behind the
information expect to benefit from it. If you can't understand their
bias, you might as well just print exactly what they give you.
There was an article in the San Jose Mercury News last week about how
great Windows 2000 was and how it would go head to head against
Solaris. Linux was never mentioned. The anti-trust case was never
mentioned. There were no techincal details of how they made this so
much better than the predecessors. The authors weren't the usual
computing reporters. Now I know what story Microsoft wants to tell.
The next day, one of the computing reporters did write it the way he
sees it (basically, don't believe the hype, treat this like any other
OS rev). His understanding of what is real and what it company
marketing is the added value of the paper.
If I didn't read the paper regularly, I wouldn't know who has what
biases and who is beyond what affects them. This information should
be readily available with the articles. It would love to see
counterpoint by people with different positions/biases/lives right
along with the main article. This is the other great advance of
SlashDot.
The paper is made up of people. Make that obvious on paper.
ok, i never read the newspaper and today i sat down and pondered why. well, first off i read the economist weekly to get an indepth round up and analysis of weekly news, but the fact of the matter is, why would i read a daily? i can get all my information free on the internet. i don't mean just free of charge, but free of influence. i can go on line and get all the undiluted associated press releases that newspaper reports crud up with thier own opinion and misinformation. i'm also free of whatever corporate bias any specific newspaper has. i'm very wary of media hype and deliberate misinformation. most newspapers are corporate beasts and accurate information isn't always in thier interest. so why don't i read newspapers? because information wants to be free.
Even though print media chooses which stories are important enough to grace their pages, so too does the web media...
Sites like cnn also show you what they feel is most important to it's viewers.
The difference between the two forms, is that on the web, I am a click away from finding another site that has other events that are important to me. In this way, I can get all the news that is important to me.
Print can't compete with this.
I won't go into what I think of the writing...
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"
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DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
Being a frequent traveler, I have to say that I often still read paper newspapers (and news magazines as well). Sitting on an airplane (or at a gate) with an open computer (or straining to read a PDA screen) is not exactly the stress-reducing activity that is often necessary in dealing with the traveling public.
A paper newspaper allows an individual to create an area of personal space (by opening and "fluffing" the paper), as well as get lost in small news pieces... it's enough to distract you from the harsh reality of your current surroundings, but not enough to cause you to miss your flight.
Having said that... this will change (IMnsHO).
The emerging buzzword (sic.) technology focused on creating "Digital Books" shows quite a lot of promise. Having been a developer on the Apple Newton project, I started to see the promise of this application in the early 90's.
Ultra-High resolution screens, instant-on, long battery life, and full color (to display those oh-so-annoying "infographics")) will be necessary to replace readers' beloved paper copies of news media.
There's also the social leap that the world needs to take... curling up with the Sunday paper on a rainy day is a completely visceral experience. The smell of the newsprint, and the feel of paper is a HUGE part of this ritual....
anyhow... that's my $0.02... and my first slashdot post.... be kind {wimper}.
- suntigen
- matthewk (MSK2)
>it's been for nearly a half century. It isn't
>technological. It's creative. They don't tell
>us things we don't know.
Mr. Katz, you have to read newspapers more often.
You're right if your inference here is that they repeat what you saw last night on your local news.
However, you can open up nearly any newspaper and get a much more in-depth story on any pressing topic. For instance, we've all heard about the elections in Iran. Well, I should say, we've all seen/heard truncated versions of that story.
Well, reporters have certainly filed stories from Iran's streets, ones that have citizens' comments and more.
These stories are in newspapers. (Some of them are on the Web, to be sure, but perhaps in not as tidy a package as a newspaper.)
I'm all for newspapers becoming electronic; that's not my particular beef with your story. Rather it's this idea that they are just too old, and too far gone to worry anymore. Not true.
OtakuVIDIOT
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
nytimes, wall street journal. Outside of that, what's the point? It's either AP/Reuters rehashes, or the quality is so low that it's a waste of time. TV news is horrendously bad (compare the BBC to CNN, and then think about the local media!). I don't buy papers much anymore, though - I tend to read online. But I still believe the quality at a few places is still the best around.
The Internet allows me to read more newspapers,
approximately a dozen. Caveat: ofter the first
two, content is rehashed from the same news
services, however I go for local issues in places
I lived and worked. Also, it is easier to selectively filter news via the net, so I read less of each paper.
Newspapers need to focus. They are a good media for delivering detailed (and I do mean detailed, not just some slaped together artical with a lot of quotations.) reports of what the TV and Cable media only glosses over. If they are covering a primery, give me data. Tell me about the state, what do the voters think, are the rules governing that primary different from any other primary, are there any special laws about primarys in that state? In other words, the devel is in the details, and I want to know all of the relevant material.
,(gasp!) real conservatives writing articals. (wow, even coverage, what a thought!) I would realy like to see liberals and conservativess debaiting the same issue, so that I the reader can see all sides of the situation. And give up the straw men. There is nothing that is more likly to make me abandon a news paper than a supposedly educated and trained editor treating a straw man as a real issue. If the editor is having trouble being objective, while representing his or her view about an issue have an associate write the artical.
Also, and this may seem obvious, print the news in the news articals and keep the op-ed's in the op-ed's colum. I may dislike a reporters politics, but as long as they tell me the news, as unbiased as possable, then I will respect their integrety. As for th op-ed colums, lets add more. I would like to see
Another thing that news papers mignt want to do is to add a section where they follow an issue. Usualy you only see somthing in the news paper when it is sensational. Well, newspaper lost that to TV, and they need to move on. I would like to see a (large) section, that follows story's reported in previous issues. It they told us about a new cancer drug, don't just say there is a drug, keep us updated. How did the clinical trials go? Are there any real (and I mean real, not just created) problems with the drug? How serious are they? If there was a train crash, dont just tell us who died, tell us who lived. Tell me about herroes from the crash.
I know this seams like a lot, and it is. But for newspapers do continue to flourish, they must find there place somewhere between TV and monthly periodicals. I hope that the place they find is one worth keeping.
If they want us to read their paper, then they'd have to be a print version of /. but that would cost money and this is free. Getting us is hopeless. As all the other news is available sooner elsewhere for free, they don't have an audience except for some suckers that want to pay for yesterday's 'news' reported as poorly as possible. What can they possibly do to get back their edge? Nothing. They are already dead, might as well let them figure it out on their own when they have NO sales because they sure aren't listening when they do surveys.
Not all news is equally important.
In fact much seems to be manufactured to grab
attention and to fill paper or air time.
I read newspapers all the time. But you can't "turn the page" on annoying radio ads (a lot of which are pushing TV shows I would never, ever watch). So now I listen to commercial-free music from my satellite dish, listen to MP3s on my computer, and pop a tape when I'm in the car. Traffic reports are the only useful thing on the radio anymore.
The history of media delivery systems seems to indicate that as new ways of presenting news become available, old means of delivery get a diminished role in society.
For instance, when network news came into the picture, magazines suffered losses. (Remeber LIFE when it really meant something to millions of people?)
When CNN came into the arena with the Gulf war, Network news took a hit. People no longer relied on the big three networks for their 5 o'clock fix: (CBS, NBC, ABC).
As old as paper-based news is, it's amazing there has been no real DIRECT competition to its market dominion over the centuries.
One would imagine that any alternate form of detailed in-depth coverage (usually in the form of print) would have diminishing effect on paper-based news.
Electronically delivered print-news is probably the biggest competitor paper-based news has ever had. It's more timely, more interactive, can deliver sounds and pictures, can be more personlized, more accessible, and has searching convenience.
If history is any indicator, electronically-delivered newspapers are likely to diminish the role of paper-based news in all forms.
It's just evolution...
Is it too late? Do any of you read Katz's books?? Do you see a future for them? Is there anything they could do that would make you want to buy and read them, either in hard copy or online form?
What do you think?
-
James Crawford
I don't dislike newspapers, but what I would pay serious subscription dollars for would be a "daily me" that gave me either a hard or web-based aggregate of the day's output of the national and international /writers/ that I like to read.
I would have no problem opening the wallet for a paper with op-ed from Maureen Dowd (NY Times) and John Nichols (The Nation), tech from Dan Gillmor (San Jose Mercury News), sports from Mike Lupica (NY Daily News) and Dan Shaughnessy (Boston Globe), movie reviews from Kenneth Turan (LA Times), music reviews and criticism from Simon Reynolds (Village Voice) etc.
This would entail some new business thinking for the papers, and might give those pesky writers more power than they would ordinarily wield. I also imagine the legal logistics involved make this a near impossibility, but the newspapers are only screwing themselves because everyone and his grandma does mouse-based content aggregation now anyway.
Message to Big Media: Steal This Idea and Thrive
I still have a couple uses for newspapers.
When I'm eating lunch, I typically pick up a LOCAL left-wing paper if one is available. If not, I occasionally grab the city paper but I rarely read anything on there that I haven't seen on the web already.
On sundays I read the back page of the Sports section (because that's where the Fry's add is) and I look for COMP USA's weekly add. The sunday sales are hard to beat... even online).
If someone happens to leave the dailies in the bathroom, I'll glance at 'em.
Starting fires.
Hello Katz,
/. 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 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'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 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 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. 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, 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 also you could OCR any book you own and convert it into doc format using the linux doctoolkit. Others check here. I have read War and Peace (over 1/2 million words) by Tolstoy (free on 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!
--
DO: two local weeekly papers. The Seattle Weekly has great writing and good articles on technology and technology culture. There's a local slant, but not so local that the writing is lousy. The Seattle Stranger doesn't have the quality, but does occasionally break and important local story. The also print fiction from time to time (imagine a person wanting to read fiction). I also read Scentific American, The Economist and Adbusters magazines in order to keep up on what's going on in parts of the world I don't touch as often. Don't: Two local dailies. The content is lousy and they have little diversity. More articles on "The Hacker Threat" and the addiction-of-the-week (will it be coffee? sex? URLs?). Here's a tip to the dailies: get someone intelligent, maybe even a non-journalist, to write a feature on their field in your Sunday edition and I will buy it.
_____________
I'll bet / with my Net / I can get / those things yet.
_____________
I'll bet / with my Net / I can get / those things yet.
--Dr. Seuss
The ratio of dead tree to useful information
is very poor in a newspaper.
1) Dump all the adverts - I don't read any of them
They are a ecological nightmare.
2) Since your information is appearing a whole
day later than the online information - you'd
better cover matters in great depth and target
my interests.
I read Scientific American - nothing else.
www.sjbaker.org
NY Times has and will effeciently survive! Here is why.
Think about how many of you now have NY Times memberships?
They have established an online presence already, made a decent reputation by carrying good stories and have attracted a decent crowd of online users
If they were to ever start seriously losing paper sales to their website.. I can easily imagine the 'send us check money order or pop into our secure server and pay us 5 bucks a month for our news paper'.
It works so well ive been trying to point this out for a good while. They may lose quite a few of the free users but, they will still have a revenue stream and they will be what I would consider a media suvivalist.
I do buy the news paper locally as well.. I dont see slashdot reporting about the serial rapist and his description who is urnning around my neighborhood.
jallen@idminc.com
The biggest advantage they have which I haven't seen mentioned is credibility. When a story is posted here, all you know is that it looked interesting to the editors. When a story appears in a newspaper, you rely on the fact that the paper has researched the topic and verified the claims as much as possible. (at least for those newspapers which are worthwhile and people tend to trust) This gives newspapers an opportunity to provide more in-depth information on all the current news because its coming from a trustworthy source. I would suggest this as a future direction for current newspapers - in depth coverage of current topics which you can't find elsewhere.
They also generally have better coverage of local news and portability (ie bathroom reading) advantages, but those have been mentioned repeatedly.
Local interest stories and insightful writing keeps me loyal to the newspaper. I don't get the USA News, I just download that to my Palm pilot, but there's still something to be said about having a newspaper in one's hand, while they have their morning cup of coffee.
Yes the news on the web comes faster than the regular newspaper. For national and groundbreaking news, I prefer the web. But for local interest stories I prefer my local newspaper. Like many other big cities, the newspaper is also available via web access. But like many other readers, the computer screen is harder on the eyes, than a newspaper.
I also associate reading the paper, as a leisure activity. Therefore I feel more comfortable and relaxed reading a paper at my morning stop before work. Purchase a nice hot cup of coffee and relax before the day begins.
Well - I'm just waiting for electronic paper to be mass-produced. Then I can buy a newspaper once, and get updated contents every day.
Here are some links to e-paper projects:
link1
link2
I only read the newpaper in Cincinnati, OH for the funnies. I lost all respect for journalistic integrity with the newspapers when my friend was dragged across the coals and his anonymity exposed in a 12 step group. That plus a fiansco involving Chiquita Banana Co. was enough to make me give up on this medium. I get my news off the web from various sources like CNN, ABC, BBC, Slashdot, and CNET. For a more editorialized synopsis, I read Time. It is inevitable that the newspapers should adopt an online subscription strategy.
Romanes eunt domus? People called Romanes, they go the 'ouse? It says Romans go home. No it doesn't. What's Latin fo
I don't read any of the national papers, in fact, I rarely look at the news, unless it's technology based. The only newspaper I skim through is our local town paper, which keeps me up on local developements, but if it's national...I just surf the web:)
Exectly what I had to say! I love my Palm III to the end of the world and avantgo/cspotrun!
Slashdot has its market niche: internationally relevant technology (and occasionally pure science) news. My local newspaper, the Raleigh [North Carolina] News and Observer, has its market niche, too: local, regional, and national news of a more general nature.
When I want to know what is happening socially or politically in northern North Carolina or even in the U.S. at large, I thumb through the day's N&O. When I want my daily fill of technology commentary and typos, I go to Slashdot. There's room for both media feeds in my life.
Strangely enough, the N&O -- the print edition, mind you -- has a weekly section about technology in general and a separate weekly section about the Internet and the Web. It's no Slashdot, but it does mean a second source for Linux news, comparisons of W2K and Unix, and information on the latest gadgets (without the annoying "Mommy I want one!" editorializing), all without connecting my pokey old modem to the Internet.
Dozens of well-researched, well-edited, and thorough news stories of all kinds, locally and nationally relevant news, interesting columnists from both ends of the political spectrum, decent technology reporting, and a handful of good comics (among two pages of admittedly bad ones) delivered by 7:00AM, for a quarter a day? Sign me up!
Sorry, Jon, if I had to give up either Slashdot or the N&O, I'd stick with my daily paper.
I read online versions of 4 newspapers: The Fresno Bee, The Seattle Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and, occasionally, The New York Times. The last time I paid for a subscription to a newspaper was more than 4 years ago.
I really don't have time to read the paper everyday, and the newspapers in my geographic area (Southern New Jersey) are pathetic. If I could, I would subscribe to The Fresno Bee (Fresno, CA) as it is still one of the best papers I've ever read. Better than any Seattle or Philadelphia/South Jersey paper. But, seriously, why pay for a print subscription when you can read it online for free?
The only periodical I read religiously is The New Yorker, which posts NO content on their website.
I pick up local niche market papers occasionally, but won't subscribe to any because I just have to throw them out, and they generally only have a small amount of information I'm interested in. If they want my business, they'll need to do something like my.excite.com or my.yahoo.com where I can select the topics I'm interested in and then print out my own paper for offline reading. Most of the time I'd probably read it online, but none of the sites I've found so far are ideal, though excite is closest. They keep chopping the articles off though and the custom topic area isn't integrated well with the "standard" topics. my.yahoo.com has better articles, but isn't as well organized to get all the info I want on one page. cnn would be my first choice for national/global news, but it's even less well organized.
I have yet to figure out how to explain to my new girlfriend how I don't bother to read the newspaper anymore. I'm trying something along the lines of:
1. I control and customize the flow of info when I get it online
2. I get a much greater depth and diversity of news and opinions online
2a. It's easier for me to assess the validity and quality of online info
I've been reading newspapers, the web services, and the newswires for many years.
You know where I and most newsorgs get their information?
Corporate "news releases". The newspapers are the worst of the lot. Many will print the news releases verbatim as leading edge stuff. Even most of the photos now come through from there.
You want in depth reporting, read alternative magazines, as newspapers don't want to expend resources looking into the information. Otherwise go to PR Newswire and save yourself looking at the grammer errors created by the newsorgs.
I read the newspaper to get the local news.. which I wouldn't feel right clicking a mouse through... I live in a small town.. and reading about how theres a folk festival, at a local park, just wouldn't feel right unless it was on paper that made my fingers black... and don't forget about COUPONS! I live on coupons.. since I don't cook, and i never have any food in my house for others to cook for me (granted, there are few willing to actually do that).. I use LOTS of coupons.. to burrito joints, pizza joints, burger joints, etc etc.. and the newspaper is a great place to find out about sales and coupons and such... can't get that from slashdot, or news.com.
-- "I feel a strong disturbance in the for.."\*Segmentation Fault*\ (core dumped)
"I read the paper every day. except the editorial page. I don't need anyone telling me what to think; at least no one living."
-----
"Defenestration" is to throw out of a window; what's a word for throwing 'Windows' out of something?
For several months, I made a point to get ahold of the monday Dallas Morning News to peruse their Science page hidden away in the business section. I was regularly annoyed at the complete ignorance of the writers. They usually showed that they had no clue about the Scientific Method. They would share the results of someone's research, but rarely the slightest hint of what evidence they found to arrive at and support their conclusions. Then I found http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/ . Considerably more satisfying than the once a week science section in the Dallas Morning News. The abcnews science website appears to be updated about twice a week. And the writers usually have a clue. I don't expect a newswriter to be scientist. I do expect a newswriter that is covering science to understand the basics of the Scientific Method. I expect a science news article to satisfy the most primitive questions that someone who believes in the Scientific Method would ask.
Yes newspapers appear to be going more obsolete. Yes they refuse to keep up with the times, and yes, the younger generations appear to be reading them less and less. Because no one makes us. Now, I'm not trying to place the blame anywhere, but who pushes us to read newspapers anymore? In education, an article here and there for current events helps, but why should we? To me there is something satisfying about reading a paper. I'm a business management student, I look at the ads, check the layout, and find news in there that I didn't find online. I only did the extensive study of a daily paper for a month, the length of my university's free paper pilot program. There is a dearth of good newspapers in my area (eastern central PA) and suddenly I had access to USA Today, The New York Times, and the Philly Inquirer. They opened my eyes to how worthy a paper could be! Before that I had been exposed mainly to two local papers all my life, and was throughly disgruntled with their content. But now that I know that good papers actually exist, I would be more inclined to read them. Hi, I'm AcidBurn, I'm a twentysomething, and I read newspapers. There will always be someone who will read newspapers, there may just not be enough to read them.
"Spandex, it's a privelege, not a right." -Cereal Killer, Hackers
In addition, I have a list of 20+ sites I browse at least once per day (including Slashdot); among those sites are several other newspapers (NY Times, Washington Times, etc.) that I scan in order to get additional (and often different) reference points on key areas or to get regional coverage. ..bruce..
Bruce F. Webster (brucefwebster.com)
I read the Boston Globe every day. I will continue to do so until I can take on-line newspapers to the bathroom, I don't have to wait for them to load, and they have all the comics.
If newspapers want to keep my business after the above conditions are satisfied, they must strive for greater accuracy than the Web. This isn't hard. I also like having a newspaper bring to my attention something I wouldn't have known about otherwise. You don't get this from a filtered news service.
As long as unbiased, reputable publications such as The Onion maintain a web page, I do not see a future for less known periodicals such as The NY Times, Wall Street Journal, etc......
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.
Speak truth to power.
I think as more people get broadband wireless access as well as cheaper and more effecient PDAs, people will be more likely to use an online newspaper instead of a hard copy. I want a newspaper, whether it's on my PDA or on printed paper, to consist of all the news I'm looking for...breaking world news, insightful political editorials, tech news, comics, etc. Of course, this will change from person to person, but that is EXACTLY what an online newspaper can do that a printed version can't.
An Online paper can tailor its content to meet the needs and desires of the specific viewer. When the Chechnyan war broke out it got a lot of coverage, yet it is still waging on, yet I hear no coverage about it...why not? Maybe I want weekly updates on it..maybe I didn't care about it in the first place. Why shouldn't I be able to 'click' on "Keep Me Informed Of This Topic" on my PDA online newspaper for it to everyday send me new information on the topic?
True, local newspaper might not ever die..their coverage is specific enough for their area that those who purchase the newspaper generally want local news.
What I want to see, however, is the Associated Press get up an independent online PDA version of a newspaper and have it send exactly what I want to my PDA every day for $0.35 cents a day. No paper, no ink, just bits and good reporting. Then, perhaps, I might subscribe to the Wall Street Journal's online version for in depth economic information or the Times for cultural/political updates. I can accept a balance between short and concise, real time news reporting and in depth, slightly outdated feature topics, yet I will pay more for a newspaper that covers an extremely current and newsworthy topic both in depth and on time.
Salis
Favorite
- Newspapers are semi-permanent as opposed to other media. Articles on radio or TV are gone as soon as they are broadcast unless recorded. An article on a website can be removed or no longer be available unless someone has been to that page and saved it, which doesn't guarantee the copy is accurate because the copy could have been tampered with. If you didn't get to that web page before it disappeared you'll never know what it said.
- One can go to archives of old newspapers as I point out in the next item; since most web pages are copyrighted one cannot (except under fair use) make copies of them for on-line archival purposes.
- A newspaper is printed and becomes a matter of public record. Back issues are often kept as archives in the stacks at the public library in that city and perhaps other cities. In smaller cities the newspaper itself keeps its old copies around for archival purposes ("newspaper morgue"). In many cities, newspapers are routinely microfilmed, which means you can go back and look up a newspaper from 30, 40, 50 to as much as 200 or more years ago. (I have seen a microfilm of The London Times dating from the 1700s, it may even have been Volume 1, Number 1).
- As was pointed out in George Orwell's 1984 the government - or anyone with an agenda - can change whatever is around if there are not permanent originals that can be maintained. Does anyone believe the People's Republic of China wouldn't change historical records if they could? Unless there are originals which can not be changed without leaving a trace, history and human memory is subject to change anytime those who want to do so
- Newspapers are printed on paper; you can carry a newspaper / magazine around and read it anywhere, outdoors, in dim light, even where there is no electricity.
- Newspapers are inexpensive. Yes you can get internet access at some public libraries, even the poorest library or most ordinary families can afford a subscription to the local newspaper. This is even more critical for newspapers in third-world countries where the average person can barely afford food. Newspapers would be available to even the poor in those countries at (I presume) public libraries, whereas Internet access might be horrendously expensive or unavailable
- You can purchase a newspaper for small change from vendors and machines.
- You do not need several hundred to several thousand dollars worth of computer equipment, a telephone line and an internet access account to read a newspaper.
- One can use old newspapers for various utility purposes such as lining birdcages, emergency toilet paper, wrapping china for packing or fish for sale, and other things where inexpensive paper is useful.
- Once someone pays for a subscription to a newspaper or magazine (or buys a copy at a newsstand or newsrack) you own the issue, you can give away or sell it or archive it. Some news web sites such as The Wall Street Journal require payment to use which means you have to continuously pay for use of the electronic edition.
- Newspapers can be used in places where electronic devices would not be suitable.
- Over the last 50 years of computer technology many formats have become obsolete, in some cases there is huge amounts of data on old media which has been irretrievably lost because the reading devices are no longer made. Does anyone still use paper tape, dectape, "washing-machine" sized disk drives, 8" diskette drives? Have you noticed the "drying up" of mag tape and 5 1/2" disk drives? As I implied, one can read 200-year-old newspapers because it requires no sophisticated technology other than eyeballs.
Paul Robinson <postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>http://paul.washington.dc.us
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
Or, specifically, with the daily paper? At least here in Boston, they still use the ink-comes-off-on-your-hands printing, and they still don't cover my suburb (Somerville) except when something dreadful happens. Any of the stories I have an intrest in turn up online (the Boston Globe puts today's and yesterday's stories up). And the Boston Herald is published by Rupert Murdoch -- the spin there is only good for laughs.
I stopped subscribing to the Boston Globe about 10 years ago -- besides the ink problem, and the difficulties in reading it on the subway, I found that most of the news fell into:
a) national/international blurbs
not enough information -- no transcripts or full text of anything
b) Local disasters
c) Grief
often rehashed months after the fact like the Worcester firefighters
d) local politics
only for Mass state and Boston City. So while I'm vitally interested in the State House, the MWRA (water) and the MBTA (T) and the Big Dig, the papers do a piss-poor job of doing more than tabloid summaries of the content I'd like to see.
And I won't even touch the so-called "women's" sections. My life is a *lot* more complicated than recipes and cellulite, trust me.
I *do* occasionally buy a NYTimes on Tuesdays for the Science section. And I often buy the local weekly Somerville Journal, or the city-wide weekly Boston Phoenix. But otherwise I rely on online sources for news (boston.com, mercury, theguardian, slashdot, etc.), or print magazines like the Economist.
The chances of my ever subscribing or reading a daily paper again are close to nil. The audience they're currently aiming at is a technophobic, shallow individual who is willing to let *them* choose which subjects I should be interested in. I just *don't* fit their target demographic -- and given the news culture (Cokie & Steven Roberts' article against net news back in the distant past, for instance), I don't imagine that I ever will.
> My comment can be quoted whenever, wherever, so long as you bloody well provide attribution! >
That paper happens to be the Montreal Gazette, (at http://www.montrealgazette.com although the web-site is pretty bad.) and I'll give a few reasons why I still bother with such a dead-tree publication:
1) The Gazette is one of the few papers that still has good comics. Montreal has an active and vocal comic-loving community and has been known to petition the paper for the comics we like. As a result, the comic page has every comic the same size as that mandated by Doonesbury, and there is nothing on the comics page but comics. There are two pages of full-color sunday comics on saturday (along with the normal B&W), and another single page of color on Sunday. Since I *still* can't get decent broadband out in the suburbs where I live, it takes me close to an hour to merely download that many comics on the Internet. Here the Gazette is actually saving me time. Now I don't want people to think that comics are the best/only thing in my life, but until recently, the comics really were the only thing that kept me a subscriber.
2) The technology reporting has recently seen a major improvement. Since part of what I do for a living in monitor changes in technology, I'm on a large slew of tech mailing lists and get most of my info from the web. This time last year, I would often find out about new technology two or three weeks before it would show up in the paper. Lately, I've been as likely to first hear about a new breakthrough in the Gazette as here on slashdot! I can only assume that there has been a major push to be more timely. Now if they would only add URLs to more of the tech stories so I could do additional research, I could start deducting the paper as a reasonable business expense.
3) The final, and IMHO the most important service that the Gazette provides is local news. Now, I don't know about most of North America, but in Montreal the English-speaking technical community is quite small. The events that occur in it can have major impacts on my life. Today, for example, I discovered in the Gazette that Zero Knowledge (a local company I'm sure many have heard of) just managed to recruit Stefan Brands. I have yet to see this news elsewhere on the net, although I assume it'll come down various channels eventually. Other news, like which Internet companies in my neighborhood are recruiting, and which are going IPO, is something that I would have a hard time finding out on my own.
So, I guess my suggestion to any newspaper that wants to keep readers like me is to try and reflect on how the local situation will change as a result of global and/or local events. Don't just report the news, reflect on what it means to the readership area. Global news I can get better on the Web. Local information of note is harder to come by.
The only newspaper I read is the campus newpaper to get my Dilbert fix and get campus news. It's free. It's in front of every building so I don't have to go out of my way to get it. For real news, I use the Internet about 99% of the time, here's why: Free: I don't want to pay for something I can get for free.
Timely: I would rather find out about something as it happens than read about it the next day.
Interactive: I often have opinions that contradict that of being presented in the article and I want to voice that opinion immediately, not a week later with a snailmail letter to the editor.
I choose the content: We don't live in the information age, we live in the data age. It only becomes information if it is useful. So I don't want to get a Sunday paper the size of two phone books. I'd rather have a computer cut through the garbage for me and give me the content I want to read. This gives me the power to avoid things that are offensive or irrelevant to me. In a regular newspaper I am often assaulted with abrasive advertising or fluff reporting on my way to the one or two articles I am interested in.
Availability: If I don't have to go out of my way to get the news, it is easier. Since I am at the computer all day anyway, it's real easy to check Internet news. If I was to pull out a huge newspaper and start reading it, would it look like I was working?
(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
MoNsTeR
1. used that large page format to deliver a single article per page.
2. delivered extremely detailed, precise info in each article (including schematics, examples, diagrams, etc.)
3. focused each issue on a broad range of topics, but each topic was very specialized.
Newspapers should become the "new educational manual".
I'd immediately buy a "how to" newspaper. why? why not. I keep a file of "how to's".
Why do I know how to build a solar oven from cardboard and tinfoil? It sure came in handy during our recent snow storms down south. Who would have thought a clear winter sun could cook a roast. It did.
Ever need to perform zone electrophoresis? Probably not...except for the time it served as my son's science project.
How about installing Linux? Where has my local newspaper ever gone into detail about that? It hasn't. But I've collected the knowledge on that topic.
Reading a news paper should increase my abilities, skills, etc.
I deal with a multitude of cultures. How was I to know that certain cultures show respect and attention by looking directly into your eyes (our culture does!), but that others show respect and attention by bowing their heads and listening intently. (Many eastern cultures do this). We seem uncultured then, demanding that people "look at us when we are talking", instead of making allowances.
A newspaper should contain in depth articles about such useful stuff.
And local how to's! How does one get involved with local theatre? which groups are open to beginners?
what should the soil PH be for certain types of local plants?
What is the voting record of our representatives on key local issues, cross referenced? Including contact points for those reps.
why oh why do newspapers insist that coverage of a topic must be minimal, trite, and inaccurate. Why do they believe that I cannot grasp the complexities of today's issues?
Detail. Fact. Variety. Focus.
That's what I want in a newspaper.
If YOU provide a paper like this, I'd like to be the first to know!
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.
The purpose of a newspaper is to sell ads and promote various corporate/business agendas. Most of the rest is just bait to draw in eyes for advertisers and the shaping of public opinion. All the points about convenience, durability and usability are true, but incidental.
I read several newspapers daily because they are a good way to serendipitously browse things I don't normally encounter and learn such esoteric lore as matinee times, obituaries and grocery bargains. Some papers (such as the New York Times) cater to a more "literate" prey-base, while others (such as the Daily News) are more downscale. This is part of the mystique they create for demographic purposes, to draw the right kind of focused clientele for their advertisers and corporate masters.
If newspapers focus on what they do best (box scores and occasional fluff, columns such as columns, local news and portable ads) they shall always have a future. As society fragments, though, they shall find it harder and harder to regain the status they had when railroads and telegraphs were the cutting-edge of exchange.
Seattle has given the world Starbucks and Microsoft. This is not a coincidence.
Okay, Jon is asking for personal reactions. For me as an American, the news comes daily from the newspaper, National Public Radio, and Slashdot. Magazines are weekly. Television is infrequent. All could use more science and technology reporting, and all need more international news.
Newspapers give a wide variety of news, with selected topics provided in some depth -- often topics that would not have been my selection, but much of the time that's to the good: I learn more, that way. Sure enough, there are prior decisions as to what's news and what can be ignored, obligatory pro, con, and middle views, a usual-suspects list of purported experts, and a punditocracy, and most of the time all are too right-wing for my taste, but still, all are also thoughtful enough to provide some insights, if only by indirection, or from their different perspective.
Besides science and overseas news, papers need more news of social issues -- and I don't mean "lifestyle." For my money, most papers try unsuccessfully to compete with the visual media by running too many graphics of the sort that look better on a CRT. What papers have to offer comes in the wide variety of articles that fill their space, and long columns of print. The graphics should illustrate those, rather than try to be attractions in themselves.
NPR gives a fairly good sample of the news across the spectrum nationally and internationally, and is reasonably centrist.
Depending on the magazine -- let's not get into that -- you have more points of view, better explanation and commentary, and better graphics.
I stopped watching much television years ago, at the time of the intervention in Somalia, when there was take after take of Mogadishu, and no explanation of what was happening in any of them. I got more out of a German TV feed, and I don't speak German! The channels offer a bare smattering of news with their crime and weather, conservative perspectives and commentators (PBS worse than private channels), and commercials, by God, commercials.
All US media are deficient in international news. It can be garnered from the web as has been mentioned, and that is very useful, but not many foreign sources give an American perspective on matters. America's willful ignorance may go along with being a superpower -- our version of the "Wogs start at Dover" mentality of 1890's Britain.
I pretty much disagree with everything said in the article above.
I read the newspaper every single day. I throw out the sports section and the classifieds, then I go through every other section of the paper. I don't read anywhere near all the articles, but I look at every page.
I read a lot of news on the web and I watch TV news every evening. Each source has a different set of spinmeisters and a different focus.
TV news is about sound and video bites and wouldn't begin to know how to cover a story in depth if they ever had the inclination to try.
News on the internet is usually niche-focused and spun like a fusion powered top. A lot of web sites go into great detail, but only as events relate to the subject matter to which the site is devoted.
Newspapers are almost as partisan as web sites, but they're not nearly so subject-driven. I'll watch TV news to get the headlines from the talking heads and look for the meat in the following morning's paper.
My only real grip with newspapers is that they're run almost exclusively by screaming liberals and I get really sick of the shameless slant they put in their stories. I live in the San Francisco bay area and I refuse to read any of the yellow rags printed by the Alameda Newspaper Group. The San Jose Mercury is a very good paper, so I guess I'm lucky to have some source of printed news. If the SJ Merc worked even harder at showing less bias and doing more in-depth reporting, it'd be as close to a perfect paper as I'd ever hope to see.
I know it's too late to make a long story short, but I have to say: Newspapers aren't dead...they're not even seriously ill. Remember, news isn't all about immediacy. If you only listen to 10 seconds of yammer from a TV news anchor or read 500 words on a web site, you really only get the precis and not the actual news.
What bugs me about my local paper is how old all the news in it is. If I hear about something over the internet or on the radio on Monday, it will be Wednesday before it makes it into the paper. On the other hand, the internet doesn't have the local advertisements and coupons.
As the internet becomes more pervasive, the local newspaper is going to become a medium for the distribution of supermarket coupons and features like comics and crossword puzzles. For news, on line services have many advantages.
There's a niche there, however, that can be capitalized on, and magazines have been able to that, by specializing in a limited range of subjects. But newspapers for the most part have missed the boat. With the exception of papers like Barons, WSJ, etc... that specialize in target audiences, most newspapers try to be everything to everybody, in the hopes that they can at least appeal to every member of a household with at least one section. With this, they open themselves up to problems. Namely, failing to define themselves as having a specific, indespensible value. I can live without the paper. I can live without the editorials. I can live without reading the comics. I can check the movie listings with online or over the phone. I can definately get better movie reviews elsewhere. I can get my world and national news elsewhere. Their forte is local news stories and issues. Stuff going on in the community that affects local citizens. But even this does not make newspapers valuable anymore, since papers return a profit and reflect interests not always in line with fair, objective coverage. You only get what the papers controllers want you to read.
I myself have not really sat down and read a paper for over 4 years. When the local paper calls about subscriptions, I tell them I can read their paper online (for free) if I felt the need. What I'm trying to say is that newspapers do not provide the same service they once did and have helped themselves along the path to declining readership and obselescence (?). The only time I can see newspapers being conveinent are at airports, on the transit, or avoiding conversation around the dinner table.
The people that still want to make a living off newspaper production need to specialize. Forget about appealing to the lowest common denominator. Forget about hiring reporters that don't have a specialized area of expertise or access. Forget newspapers as they've been defined in the past. Things change. Think outside the box. Despite the technophobes desire to return to life the way they used to know it (or more likely, imagine it to have been), there is no turning back. There is no need for daily print publications dispensing watered-down coverage of information that has already been covered. You can not appeal to people on these terms. Realize that the media and its distribution channels have entered a new paradigm.
I think this is an amazingly smart post...slashdot at its best, and every paper editor ought to read it. It directly and indirectly, IMHO, captures what is off about papers and offers some directions they could take that would make them valuable again, at least to me..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I don't agree that genetics/techology is less interesting or relevant to most people than what's happening in parts of the Carolinas. If you're talking about the need for local news, then of course you're quite right. And you raise a good question, which I'd love to see people try and answer. If you had to give up Slashdot or your local paper, which would you give up?
jonkatz@slashdot.org
This is another incredibly smart, useful and specific post that might be very useful to paper editors.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Okay, I have to admit I gave up on the NYTimes the first time I attended an event (an anti-V-war march in Washington) and then saw the incredibly-biased-posing-as-objective coverage of that event. Now, that was back around 1970.
Around 1993, however, I began happily to read New York Newsday. Coverage of local issues -- complete with an overt point of view and references to other related (sometimes behind the scenes) events -- was excellent. I often read this paper cover to cover.
Now, Newsday started out in Long Island, and I think there's a Queens version, too, and those are both still going strong -- but the NYC (Manhattan) edition was killed. Deliberately. By its publisher, who could (according to chat on the Charlie Rose Show the night it was declared murdered) have started to see profits (!) within another year or two.
The writing was great, coverage was great, I even kinda went along with the editorial slant (which wasn't pseudo-objective, thank heaven). So they killed it.
There are no good papers in NYC. If there are no good papers left here, why should I expect to see any good papers anywhere else? The "alternative" trash papers are available here for free, but again, the good writers (with a point of view, reporting and extrapolating from events) have disappeared and what's left is junk, self-absorbed filler around which to arrange "related" advertising.
My "regular" sources of news include the Web (BBC, PPS and these also on radio sometimes), Science News, /., "In These Times" (terrible technical/science coverage, but okay on keeping me current with the old-fashioned "Left"), but I can't imagine anyone in this country ever making a newspaper work again. It takes a lot of money, and that means taking a risk, and no rich person wants to do that. Nor do rich folks have any interest, generally, in reporting on real issues and thereby threatening the status quo.
One part of why I read newspapers is that the front page of the NYT - or the week's headlines section of The Economist - has more information than a whole half hour news program. There are two implications of this: One is that there's plenty more info available on the stories I find interesting. The other is that I'm not forced to sit through a linear narrative of the stuff I'm not interested in; I can read the headline or the first pp and move on. I'm in control.
I'm in control with Web news as well, but there are no annoying waits with a newspaper. The text is more legible, too, and I don't keep having to scroll. That is, ink on paper still has technological advantages that electric paper and broadband may take a decade or more to eradicate.
Of course, another reason to read newspapers is that they present much more than just the headlines that you can get off TV or the Web. The inside pages are full of stories that may not be flashy enough to make the evening news but are nonetheless interesting to read. (The Economist is particularly good on international news.) What passes for a long essay online is a couple of columns in the Times - and the Times routinely runs full-page and multi-page articles that are often the results of weeks of work.
There's a quality issue, too. One of the great strengths of the Web is that anyone can publish. Of course, that's also one of its great weaknesses: in a medium full of rumors, lies, gossip, and half-truths, you are by and large forced to rely on internal cues like the quality of the writing and presentation to decide how much to believe what you read online. A major newspaper has been around for decades and plans to be around for centuries; if they goof, they admit it. You can generally trust their facts. Also, the quality of the writing is usually pretty good, the result of a competive culture.
Katz makes much of the fact that newspapers are dailies; that the news they present is old news. He's being silly. Some of us have better things to do than check the headlines several times a day. We want to know what's happening in the world, but it doesn't change what we do day to day, and so it's just fine to catch up on it when it's convenient for us - with a meal, in the case of the NYT, or while I exercise, in the case of The Economist.
For that matter, at least as far as I'm concerned, he's got it flat out backwards when it comes to the relationship between the dailies and the instant news feeds. One of my peeves with the NYT, in fact, is that they do increasingly see themselves as the more-detail adjunct to the headline servers. Too often, the first I'll hear of something is the front page follow-up ('Survivors Grieving After Poor Maintenance Downs Another Jet') in the morning paper.
One of the things I find limiting about the current print papers is something that's even more prevalent in the online versions - lack of depth. I know earlier comments have pointed to newspapers as bastions of well-thought-out, detailed analyses of events and issues, but the truth of the matter is that these people are on timelines, and trying to beat each other to the scoop. Newspaper stories, just like digital postings to Web and USENET are slanted, incomplete, and scoped to different levels of detail.
The thing that was nice at ClariNet was that we shipped about 3700 stories per day, and these went out to about 2 million people around the world. It was way too much to possibly keep up with, but when you wanted to know about some specific thing, you had multiple views of the event, based on different reporters, working for different wire services (Reuters, AP, UPI, etc.) and they would have different takes on things, as well as point out different details that might have been omitted by others. In this way, it was very difficult for truth to be masked out based on one editor or leaning of one publication. Certainly, you had to weed through a lot more stuff, but as with USENET, you got a better general overview, and were able to make your own decisions and come to your own conclusions. Case in point: When Princess Diana died, we were carrying hundreds of stories per day. Sometimes 100 or more per hour. It might not be exactly the news you were interested, if you weren't into Princess Di, but if you were, there was no better way to find out as much as possible. The nice thing was, this didn't apply just to news about Pricess Di, but to everything.
I certainly don't think that newspapers are dead, by any means, but I'm not not sure they yet recognize the metamorphosis that they're going through. (Caterpillars don't understand butterflies, nor do they understand their own transformation while in the chrysalis.)
I make it a regular habit to stop by the newspaper stands whenever I pass them on the street. I scan every cover, note every story, and sometimes pause to read a bit more. Seldom do I need to actually buy one for more detail, but I certainly use it to remain aware of what's going on. I also listen to NPR and the BBC on public radio almost all the time while in the car, at home in the morning, etc. I also read all the news that comes through my pager, as well as scan Slashdot numerous times per day, and follow many of the other links through to various other websites.
To be honest, I can't get enough information, and as I learn ways to process more, I up my daily intake, because the knowledge rush is fantastic. I feel that all of the info-services (papers, websites, etc.) provide a great service, and I see them morphing in the future into info-pools that people can dip into to get personalized news that fits their interests. NewsEdge (http://www.newsedge.com/) is already doing this, as are many others, but each tries to monopolize the attention of the user, and keep them on their site. (Usually for ad-revenue-generation purposes, which seems very short-sighted.)
If you've read "The Diamond Age", you'll recall the "mediatronic paper" that was left laying around in doctor's offices, subways, busses, etc. It was blank, but "live", wired to the Net and able to pull up your info from wherever you prefered it. The material itself, the mediatronic paper, was throwaway. It was community property. Someone sat down in a subway, picked up a "paper" (blank at this time), logged in, and suddenly it filled with their stock quotes, world news, etc. When they dropped it at their next stop, it logged them out, went blank, and waited for the next person. (When they picked it up, it might be all sports and nudie GIFs, who knows?) The medium, in that scenario, was free. The message, however, came streaming in from the data-cloud.
This is where I think the future of all info-providers is heading, whether they realize it or not. Nowadays, I access the net from numerous machines, locations, and browser types. I can get my info wherever I am. A newspaper, a physical newspaper, is a convenient way to carry the info around with me. Certainly easier to fold and carry than my notebook. The E-Ink corporation (http://www.eink.com/) is already working on primitive 1st-generation mediatronic materials. It will only get better, cheaper, and more portable.
As we move forward into this century, I suspect we'll see more intelligent agents that go out and forage through the data-fields, harvest what we want, and bring it back. I suspect that the info itself will be cut, chopped, bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated along the way, to build the custom view that we want, regardless of how the original publisher intended it.
My advice to the newspaper people out there (whom I hope are reading this) is to stop trying to focus on how to hold those eyeballs on your page, for the express purpose of pushing ads at them. (I already have my browser programmed to filter out all ads, and you can, too. See http://www.junkbuster.com/ ) Instead, focus on making your info good, accurate, WIDELY AVAILABLE, and in an easily digestible form. (ASCII works great on pagers and cell phones, images are still limited in this regard. Take a lesson from that.) Try to work with others to develop standards of interoperability, so that your massive armies of reporters and data-gatherers aren't competing with each other for the scoop in order to get more ad-eyeballs. Just gather as much info as you can, and get it out to as many people as you can. We're out here, and we'll harvest it, and make our own decisions, provided we've got enough info to allow us to do so.
Jon Katz:
You are one incredibly stupid motherfucker.
Muck, I'm curious as to why you wouldn't feel at ease reading local news online. Also are free coupons available on the Web?
jonkatz@slashdot.org
"...what might make the people who read Slashdot want to read daily papers."
.com on their business card? Why do they play the jingo whenever a tech story comes along?
I know. Stop being stupid -- esp. about tech news.
As an example, I was watching CNN HN about a week ago, a few days after the DDOS on Yahoo and whoever else. CNN HN had a blurb on updates on the DDOS saga.
The story on the DDOS was depressingly typical. It was full of half-truths, misused terms, and lots of assumptions which clearly had come directly from a government contact (and probably come to CNN via Reuters/AP) without any double checking.
My favorite bit was the stock footage of random browsers failing to load various sites. It made me remember why I stopped reading/watching most news.
Well, the more cynical would say this is typical of all news, and that, for example, political news, business news, etc. are all reported horribly and with little to no fact-checking or legwork. I thought that for a second, and then I saw CNN HN's next story.
Ths next story was about the Alaska Air flight which had crashed or whatever the week before. Apparently they had discovered or theorized that the big screw fell out and caused havoc.
THIS story was full of good stuff! It even had 3D vectored FMV showing the parts of the airplane involved, spinning and working together. Over this was lots of talk of "elevators being controlled by ailerons and when the screw turns the torque provides the yadda for the thingamabob", with lots of technical terms, clearly-read explanations...,
stuff that, if I cared how planes worked, would have been really informative. It made me go 'wow!'
I wondered, why was there such a difference between the two stories? Why was the Alaska Air story so informative, and the DDOS story so full of nonsense? Granted, Alaska Air probably provided those images and explanation. But why didnt CNN get good explanations of the DDOS? Why do they listen to government schleps, feds, and idiots with a
That's what pisses me off, and I'm sure it pisses geeks off. And that's why I don't read the mainstream press anymore.
BTW, I do read unfiltered news feeds (as on certain portal sites), which although still often full of nonsense, have the benefit of not being further misinterpreted by geek-wannabes like Hiawatha Bray at the Boston Globe or talking heads on CNN.
I also read the Christian Science Monitor, because they are very rarely stupid when they report news. It's quite a nice feeling to read a well-researched story instead of a wire-pulled piece of crap.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
I still read the newpaper because I trust it more than the web. Print journalists usually write for one newspaper, and have some kind of editorial review process. Web-based journalists do not. A simple example of this - my hometown newspaper, the San Jose Merc, fired a gossip columnist after learning that she wrote favorably of a company she received stock in. Do I know, for example, that RagingBull.com would do so with one of their columnists? No...and until I acheive that level of trust, I'm still going to read the newspaper.
Brian, I don't read the Record. My wife subscribes to the NYTimes (she's a reporter), but I get my news online, and sometimes from TV and magazines and have for some years now.
I believe from what I've read that the Record, a good paper with a good record, has been struggling with circulation and advertising in recent years. I'm not predicting the death of papers, though I suspect they will not exist too much longer in this form, which will be a shame.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Well, I would read newspapers if only they were full of Trolls, NP's posts, first posts and HOT GRITS. After all, isn't it the most interesting part of /.? The part that everybody chech everyday and read with awe of the insightfullness of these posters?
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Not too many do. Journalism and publishing face a lot of the same problems. Most people don't see a future for hard cover books. There's a lot they (publishers) could do to get more people to buy and read them (many of the very same things that newspapers might try) and very few people have ever bought my books in hard copy or online form.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I would probably subscribe to my local newspaper if the distribution fee was lower. The amount of money they charge for distribution is rediculous. I was thinking about subscribing to the Sunday paper alone, but my jaw dropped with the salesman told me how much it would be. It's ludicrous! I'm not supposed to pay for the content, the ads are. If it really costs that much to distribute maybe they should change their advertizing model to supplement the costs. In turn, they could give their advertizers a larger readership.
I have a website. It's about Macs.
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.
The canonical volume in this field is the surprisingly well-received The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice , by Christopher Hitchens. Highly recommended.
Newspapers are still the single fastest way for me to get lots of information fast. For this I sacrifice some of the detailed and topical stuff that is available on the web. Annlike the web I
<ul>
<li>Don't have to wait for the pages and advertising to download
<li>Don't have to visit multiple sites to get the info I am looking for
<li>Don't have to be tied to a networked computer.
</ul>
Newspapers don't appeal to Jon Katz of the slashdot crowd brcause they are not focused on the GNU system. Another inane article by Jon Katz
"'s" is for the possesive not the plural. E.g. CEOs, CDs and The Smiths are all correct pluralizations. "We met with the CEOs of Transmeta and Intel" is correct, as is "that is the CEO's desk".
"it's" refers to the conjunction for "it is". "its" refers to the posessive. It's backwards, but that's its correct use.
I know, this is flamebait for sure. And yes, this is being proudish. But, we have to draw the line somewhere, and it's time we did.
Several comments have referred to the timeliness of the Web as compared to newspapers. It's certainly easy to get addicted to news-as-it-happens, but unless you're a political campaign manager, FEMA director, Fortune 500 CEO or (real) day trader, newspapers are already more than fast enough to get you the information you actually need. So this wasn't a major concern for me. I would be just as happy waiting until after Super Tuesday before awareness even dawns that the primaries have started. Certainly, hearing about the results the next day is not a problem for me.
The other major issue seems to be quality of content. Again, I don't find this to be particularly relevent. After all, most of the newspaper articles are the exact same AP or Reuters wire feeds that you can read on Yahoo. It's true that the Web has some really good specialized news sites, but on the other hand, good newspapers have excellent investigative reporters. In the end, it comes out about even in my book.
Katz and a few other posters seem to be unduly concerned about the lack of graphic content in newspapers. I would like to point out that the Web isn't any more graphical than a newspaper. How many of Katz's articles on Slashdot have ever had so much as a single accompanying photo? Does anyone else notice that the photos accompanying Yahoo news items seem jarringly out of place somehow? The Web is clearly a textual medium, just like a newspaper--the opinions of Web pundits with fond memories of the days when Wired was actually cool notwithstanding.After all, do you watch Slashdot or do you read Slashdot? The Web is therefore a much better place than, say, television, for the presentation of complex and difficult topics. But so are newspapers. Print journalism is in a very sad state at the moment, but this is not inherent to the medium; there used to be excellent reporting in the papers, and if the Web figures out how to do it well, the papers can for the most part pick it up without any trouble. Again, it's a wash.
If these weren't the reasons, why did I stop my subscription to the Raleigh News & Observer several years ago? The main reasons are:
The physical act itself
I've never found reading a newspaper to be a very comfortable experience. It's too big. If you're in a crowded area, like a typical RTP lunch spot, you practically have to take up two seats. Newspapers were obviously designed to be read in overstuffed armchairs. I don't own an overstuffed armchair. I'm perfectly comfortable reading a magazine or novel over lunch, but a newspaper is too cumbersome. Actually, the only way I really enjoy reading a newspaper is if I take up the whole dining room table with it. Big, slow and spread out all over the place just doesn't fit my personality or lifestyle.
The lack of searchability
I don't read the paper for its entertainment value. My recreational reading runs to novels, the Atlantic Monthly and Scientific American. I (used to) read the paper to keep up with current events in areas which interest me. However, newspapers only provide one index method (so to speak) - the date. I frequently find myself wanting to know what's happening in some specialized area, like: what's happening today in Kosovo. I'm not a passive vessel to fill with whatever the newspaper chooses to publish that day. I'm an active, self-directed seeker of information. I want to be able to ask a question and get an answer. I can do this with the Web, but it's hard to see how a newspaper could work this way.
Local news
I'm going to go against the grain here and say that I much prefer getting my local news from the WRAL-TV Web site, rather than the News & Observer, so I credit this as a strenght of the Web. I understand this might not be true in other areas, because they might not have a resource like WRAL. However, I think WRAL has made it clear that the Web has inherent possibilities for local news reporting that newspapers can't duplicate. With this year's hurricanes and snowstorms, I want to know, in the evening, whether the kids' schools will be open the following morning. As I get ready to leave for work, I want to know, at that particular moment, what the traffic situation is like on I-40. I want to know what that big construction project I saw driving to work was all about. I want to see the milestone dates for the Outer Loop--and whether they're being met or not. And I want it all to appear at the moment I want to know, not when the paper happens to run a story.
Heavy-handed marketing
The News & Observer went through a couple years where they made extensive use of outbound telemarketing as a promotional vehicle. I'm not one of these knee-jerk boycotters, but when a firm interrupts your dinner half three times in the same month to pummel you with a hard-sell for a product you already buy from them, you tend to notice. It's not enough of a big deal to make me stop the paper for just this reason, but the ongoing sense of vague irritation was certainly a contributing factor.
Editorial bias
Everyone in this area says the N&O is too liberal. Personally, I find it far too conservative. But that's not the problem. The problem is that by having a single reporting structure under an editor-in-chief, every newspaper can't help but show some kind of editorial bias. When I want to read opinion pieces, I'll pick up a magazine. I'm interested in a newspaper for factual reporting of what actually happened. Much too often, the interpretation and opinion gets in the way of telling the story as it actually occurred. Reading newspaper pieces, I often find myself disagreeing with the writer and wishing I had some source of simple factual data to check up on it for myself - so I go to the Web. Once this had happened often enough, I started going to the Web first, rather than reading the paper at all. When I found that a whole week of papers had come in and I hadn't read a single one, I decided to quit.
Incidentally, now I know why Katz and Jesse Burst and so forth close their articles with "opinions? talk back by clicking..." type statements. It's much easier than thinking of an effective closing paragraph.
-Graham
Content- Updated twice a day in large markets, and writen from a local stand point. They tell me, in-line and up front some of the ways that this info will effect me.
Easy to read- Lets face it, these things are writen to the level many of us were reading at in 4th grade. And then they go on to explain every acronym and technical term. I admit, they don't give enough info, but they make it really easy to go and look up online.
Dependable- There is a new paper every morning and after noon. The info is todays, though not up-to-the-second, and is *hopefully* as acurate and dependable as any website, with sourses sited and authors noted if any problems come up. And Finaly, They Have Money... They can afford to run sindicated Comics and Dear Abby. It's taken me quite a while to find Dave Bary posted online. The news papers, unfortunatly don't seem to catch that this is the one place that the Net won't catch up on for a while. Abby and Anne Landers are both rich, and that's not off of my 50 cents a day, that's off of Millions of people buying thousands of papers that carry their collumns. Lets see slashdot match that.
-Earthman
Earthman
Say it to me face w/ out wasting space...
One problem I'm seeing in most people's arguments is that they are not separating out the actual 'news' presented from the media it is presented with. While I will agree that there is some interdependence, it is not absolute. The news presented by the NYTimes in paper and web form is nearly identical. The same is true of news from CNN: it's basically the same whether it appears on cnn.com or channel ##. There will likely never be a 'death' of newspapers or their style of reporting, even if the media and distribution method adopted is more digital. While local papers may be the last to make the move from wood to silicon, there is no reason why it can't necessarily happen. All it takes is ubiquitous net access (and a significant increase in paper pulp prices / green-thinking wouldn't hurt...).
Most news papers are written at the 8th grade level or below, which was why I stopped reading most of them in 9th grade. Of course, comics take so damn long to download.
Ultimatly, though, I don't think it's going to be about what people want. Radio used to be an open medium like the internet. Radio got bought out by corporations. Television then became a way for people to reach out across distances, but now corporations own it.
Now polititians are pushing for a less 'open' internet to curb the recent rash of internet 'attacks', whoever they might have been caused by.
So the net will go the way of radio and television, and to hell with what people want.
You can make people eat shit and they won't complain, just as long as you don't let them know that not everything tastes like shit.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
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.
Puh-leaze! News isn't about graphics. News is about SELECTION and DIGESTING of events to make them convenient. My main news source for the technology issues is a British site that has no graphics at all, except in the ads and title bar. Are you implying that the Vancouver Province or USA Today are graphics impaired despite photos and graphs everywhere, while The Register is graphically with-it with text-only postings?
Graphics is candy. It is nice if the site is a long-term site that allows you the time to tune the appearance. But a newspaper's angle on the news isn't a place for grisly photos (TV or RealMedia will always win that one) or else it is annoying fluff.
Combine that with its lack of timeliness, and it's become pretty irrelevant.
I've only subscribed on weekends for more than ten years; I'm pretty close to blowing it away altogether.
A replacement? nando.com; nwcn.com (Northwest Cable news) and of course cable television.
t_t_b
--
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
Why in the world do newspapers keep wasting trees on stock quotes? I'd bet that 95%+ of the people interested in them have Web access. And getting them free from the web is SOOO much easier and faster than looking for them in a paper!
Papers are good for things of local interest and comics. That's about it! Yeah, you can get comics on the web, but it's nice to have the condensed together on a page and delivered to you. (And yes, I know, there are Perl scripts to do that on the Net, so maybe comics isn't even a valid reason...)
i've never read the newspaper. it always seemed a BIG waste to me to have this thick pile of paper that you had to throw out every day.
i read the web however - slashdot is all the news i need. all the rest of the "politics" that goes on in newspapers just bores me silly.
basically, i guess i don't like the "PUSH" of newspapers where they determine what to feed you.
the toronto SUN is one of the WORST gossip rags i've ever seen - i would pay just to keep them from ever printing another copy again!
j.
Sure I'd like to smash my neighbors' bratty asshole kids in the head with a monitor but then it would be broken.
I like that the morning paper (SF Chronicle) I read on the train to work is also on the web. This way I can send the url of any interesting stories to my co-workers/friends. Not all stories are on the web, but the majority are there.
I still have a affection for my print copy (and not just newspapers).
-- Viva FreeBSD --
1) Stop mixing the news and ads all over the page. If advertising is a fact of life, why not split the page so that the news is always on the upper half and the ads on the bottom half? Whatever you do, DON'T put news items in the middle of a 12-page "paid advertisement" spread. 2) Forget the "sound bite" journalism. I want the newspaper to tell me the WHOLE story. You're not writing scripts for a TV network's "top of the hour news roundup". If you can't give me at least 1/4 page on a story then you're probably wasting my time. While you're at it, forget about "breaking stories". By the time you edit/print/distribute, your news is either old or no longer accurate. Either way it becomes irrelevant. 3) Learn the difference between "news", "sports" and "entertainment". The front page is not the place to be telling us the latest Hollywood gossip or reporting NBA draft picks.
First of all, newspapers still deliver in depth information and local news better than online resources. But any of that could change in a moment if the right people were working for the online news sites. The real need for a newspaper now is as an unmutable record of our history. Think about George Orwell's 1984. In 1984, when the government wanted to change history, they would go out and collect every newspaper that mentioned that topic and reprint it to reflect the changes. Even in the lockdown world of Big Brother, a few papers always slipped through the cracks and there remained a record of what had originally been. In real practice, something like retrieving all the newspapers from a certain day is impossible. On the other hand, changing a web archive, or any other digital data, is trivial. The government or the news media themselves could swoop down, sieze the archive, and make any change they want. They could make a week disappear. Okay, with thousands of news sources, this might be difficult, but what about official records? Imagine the "Congressional Record". Every day that the United States Congress is in session, a newspaper containing transcripts and reports of the session is printed. Although it is already somewhat suspect, since Congressmen can edit it before it is published, once the "Congressional Record" is published, there is a permanent record of what has occurred. Newspapers serve this same purpose in a way that digital media never will. People clip articles and save papers and can go back to them years later and say, "Look. This is what happened." This is the role of the newspaper in the digital age, as surely as it was 100 years ago.
-"I talked to God and here's the deal/ He said to floss between each meal" -- Uninvited
I could see a newspaper being somewhat successful just printing what web sites had reported. They could print what slashdot put up the day before, and maybe corrections, and a filtered version of the discussion area. I have to ride the bus to work everyday, so I would enjoy reading a web log that wasn't printed on 8.5X11 sheets. Plus I usually read slashdot 4 or 5 times a day. But work has kept me from surfing the web a lot on my personal time, since I have very little of it.
addict (-dkt) v. tr. addicted, addicting, addicts. 1.To devote or give (oneself) habitually o
Most of the comments have dealt with convenience or how much the posters like reading the paper, but there's something more at stake: archival. I'm sure someone will point out that it's far from impossible to archive online media, and that's true. But it is difficult. Current optical media degrade after 20 years; most other alternatives are too expensive to consider.
Furthermore, even though it's not impossible, very few "new" media are being archived in this way. It's just not sexy to have a link to "yesterday's news" on the news homepage. It's bloody difficult find this kind of history for online media. Or sometimes, they are, somewhere besides here; CNN always seems to be able to rattle off a tape of what they broadcast a year ago. But I can't just run down to my library and get it. Call me a nut, but I don't feel comfortable leaving the sole responsiblity for news archival with corporate interests.
Until there are some better solutions for non-print media archival, I think papers must survive to fill that "archivable" position. It makes me sad that so many of them are moving into the digital age so poorly.
I read it (not the online version...) largely because it's very comprehensive, very informative, very well written, and about the last place in the world that doesn't have any goddamn liberals in it. I use the net to check up on occasional tech news, but I find WSJ to be far better for everything else, and I don't see it going away any time soon.
I read my local paper EVERYday. I like to see if anyone *I* know is in print (Police Beat, Weddings, Obits, etc.). So to me the paper is great for the near home stuff. As stated a million times over, the national and international news is covered quite well on the web.
... you know you have one).
BUT HEY, belive it or not, there are people out there that don't sit in front of a computer all day. Think of your Mom (or some other non-wired friend
I have kids and I encourage them to READ things in print: news papers, magazines, BOOKS, etc. The printed word is not something we should let go of. I see this as helping with grammer and spelling and all the other stuff web posters seem to forget about.
However, I still find a rl paper to be the best place to read the funnies.
Survival of the fittest.
Every newspaper has multiple sections, each of which holds some appeal for some people. Unfortunately, try offering the corner newsstand a dime for just the sports section.
The NYTimes et al need to cease being A newspaper and begin being a brand of news sources. Each sub-section would flourish or wither with people's level of interest. Sooner or later everyone would stop buying SmalltownUSA's Frontpage and National news sections, but would probably still buy the local arts/sports scores sections. The urbane, well thought out editorials of today could survive in national distribution format while the stock "price" page would die quicker than DIVX.
The answer seems simple: Newspapers need to stop competing in arenas they cannot win and focus on the features that make them unique and valuable.
I moved into not reading newspapers slowly. First i subscribed daily. Those papers just piled up unread. I then subscribed weekly, for the comics and tv guide. Sometimes i'd read the paper, but i would get pissed off at the sensationalistic pandering to emotion (instead of logic), the poor grammar, and the general lack of understanding about the topics on which they were reporting.
While my newpaper readership was eroding, my online readership was increasing. Online i could find (and this is the important part) PEER REVIEWED (or at least feedback-enabled) topical articles on everything from local issues to worldwide issues. As an example, contrast the recent reporting of "evil hackers" in newspapers with those online (in places such as slashdot). Compare the reporting in the traditional media of the WTO in Seattle with the articles/discussions online. Try it again with Columbine. I would have loved to hear what the people inside the compound at Waco, Texax had to say about the government killing all of them.
Again and again, the newspapers (and "traditional" media) write biased, one-sided, and usually uninformed stories. It is a waste of my time to read the newspaper.
Aside from that rant, two other important things to me are that:
1. You can't grep dead trees.
2. You must kill something to make a newspaper. (see #1 if you can't figure out what this is)
Demonstrant's Open Source Tools
Newspapers might try to post userfriendly. I would probably read (at least the comic page) the newspaper every day. I hate to say it though, but newspapers (at least in the nerd/geek area) seem to be getting very unpopular for a lot of our culture. Just a view from my knothole
Perception is reality
Yes. Let's stipulate that I'm loathesome and move on to some subject less boring than me, which would be almost anything. There just ain't anything more to be said. There's got to be more worthwhile stuff to do..I second this motion and remember, you can just go to your prefs and skip the experience of reading me at all with just a click or two.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
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
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
The stats on papers and younger readers are horrifying -- there aren't any.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I occasionally flip through my newspaper (in houston here so it is the houston chronicle).
Problem is: either I've gotten the info already from another quicker (online) source already, don't care (food sections, local news, and sports are just fluff to me and if i cared the first and third would fall to online too), or it is TOO DUMBED DOWN FOR THE MASSES.
Every sunday (I think) the houston chronicle posts a "technology" section which is usually tips on word and the latest release of quicken, or, if it is anything about new tech I MIGHT care about, I've already heard it months before it hits there.
The newspaper used to be the only means for people to get their news, hence it covered everything happening very generally. This changed. They did not. They need to make the newspaper contain interesting things that I may not have known, or information in addition to what people have already seen online or on tv. They need to assume people already know and only give a short summary before they splurge into details that tv does NOT cover. Also, a tech section that is written for tech people would be nice.
People are not drawn to read online for any reason other than the vastness and speed of information. I read slashdot, and lately www.kiro5hin.org mainly because i see information there that interests me. If the newspaper did that, I would read it more often as well.
All the bad things Katz says about the papers are true. The First Amendment is a wonderful and great thing, but the press (indeed, the mainstream media) has become more the sort of thing the First Amendment was designed to protect us against than the agent of our protection. The pretense of newspapers providing "news" is a joke--perhaps they should be called "oldpapers" instead--as is their pretense of objectivity.
What do I think could replace newspapers? It would probably take the "digital paper" that I've read about; rather than generating lots of landfill fodder, keep a piece of digital paper that the newspaper, customized to your interests if you subscribe, can be downloaded into.
I get the Chicago Trib but feel guilty at all the trees that need to die each week to provide me with ads I don't even look at or complete sections trashed. The future of newspapers should be digital ink! Then I can read it on the can, in a train, on a beach. And while they are at it make it bluetooth enabled so that it constantly up to date!
As a Systems Analyst for a decent size paper, I feel I can talk about the state of newspapers and technology. First. Many newspapers were significantly behind the times tech wise. Much of that has changes since Y2K changes were made. Our paper spent half a million alone. Second. Until e-paper takes off, print will always be behind instant news. Third. Any changes to the layout or look of a paper are _very_ expensive both in capital and man hours redesigning templates, presses, etc. Fourth. Most good papers have good websites these days. Our paper was one of the first papers to take the plunge into the online market. We now have a respected and informative online site. Everyone should rememeber that unlike electronic media, physical media take time and many more man hours to produce and distribute. Personally, I think that most papers could steamline their content, but a good size paper will still employ hundreds if not thousands of people. Papers still innovate! Don't write us off too soon.
I don't read newspapers anymore, not because the 'digital revolution', but because I fear that newspapers aren't reportting pertinent infomation anymore, just vain attempts to attract eyeballs and become as vapid and glib as television 'news'. While Katz's only concern seems to be the lack of coverage of technology in papers, he neglects to mention that many subjects aren't covered in major media of far more importance than a few new toys for us geeks. Print media is not dead, I still find time to read AdBusters, 2600, Covert Action Quarterly, etc, but for the reasons that those publications (many of which contain extremely informative websites) deal with real issues, not just weather or not Calista Flockhart is anoxeric. Unless newspapers, and other classic media stop catering to low-brows, no-brows, and a far too pro-corporate viewpoint, I won't be paying any attention.
You are more than the sum of what you consume.
Desire is not an occupation.
I think you made more assumptions than I care to count.
If I felt that more newspaper articles were written to actually inform me of something I didn't know, I would probably buy them more often. Even with eye catching headlines, the vast majority of what I read is re-hashed, pre-digested, pre-judged drivel.
What happened to articles that delivered the facts of an event without also providing 'in depth analysis'? I don't need someone to explain a 'possible' why for someone's alleged crimes/behavior/success. If you don't know, DON'T PUBLISH THE ARTICLE UNTIL YOU DO!
I'm a very selective news junkie. For instance, I avidly follow Russian and Irish politics (I don't know why). The NYTimes(print) has excellent coverage of these, asa well as a wonderful weekly tech section, which is the other subject I avidly follow. /. and interfax, is The Irish Times, an online form of a print paper. But I find it much more comfortable to read from a printed page, and it seems that more care goes into newspapers than online new spots like Yahoo.
;)
With the exception of newswires like InterFax, it seems to me that the only advantage the net has over print journalism is accessibility. My only othe online news source, besides
Also, to any NYTimes people reading this: Comics are a Good Thing.
-Ravagin
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is NPR! And that means....it's time for a drum solo!"
Karma: T-rexcellent.
For those who dont know, since the 50's, the sales/person of dailys has been slowly but constantly been reduced. To a such point that news magna Lord Thompson has decided to sell all of his printed medias, including many of the most respected papers in the World, he is keeping only one the Toronto Globe&Mail and he is probably doing so uniquely for emotive reasons, because the Globe is clearly a money looser. In Canada, one guy, Conrad Black, owns 60% of all newspapers and he said it clearly, he is not doing it to make money, but to influence the public opinion. There is no money to be made in newspapers and they are slowly dying. Nothing can be done about that...
/.ers are interested in are not generic tech news, but specialised news, so they have to go specialised medias (ZDNN, news.com, /., fm) The average population is completely uninterested in detailed tech news and this is not the future of paper...
The only printed media I still read is The Economist and the Linux Journal. Even if we receive the best newspaper in the province every morning, but it is completely irrelevant, everything in there can be read much faster on the Internet. The reason that something like the Economist is so good is that they dont try to give you the news that everyone has. They had a few months ago an article about the president of Brazil trying to ban all private possession of firearms (there are more weapons in circulation in Brazil than in the US if you want an idea of how much a problem it is), I saw this news in no other media. And there are also the background and opinion articles that are interesting. But their great success is not trying to be CNN. One of the other good things we find in British magazines but that exists nowhere else is that articles are anonymous. That's right, there are no names attached to the articles. Except for celebrities (like when they get the Secretary General of UN to write his opinions on the future of Peacekeeping). This seems to dramatically increase the quality of the content, since the editor knows that he is the only person to be blamed if anything bad goes into it. And it also allows more controversial positions to be taken without risks for the other since the institution is taking the risk.
As for the LJ, well I dont read the news article, but there I am mostly interested in the articles about uses of Linux and tutorial kind of articles.
Some people say that dailys should go into local news. And that's what they are doing... But local news most of the time that means very boring local politics, like "Should the news street be 17' or 18' wide"... or even worst "Terrible accidents on Main Street".... Or they will go into important news about sports and other things like that.
The only place where I still can see a usefullness for them is in bringing out political scandals, something large media conglomerates. Nixon would have never been caught without Woodward and the other guy from the Washington Post. But in daily news reporting, they have NO future, radio and TV has killed them.
Let me repeat this, there future is in background and analysis (that includes critical analysis aka commentary). CNN and the Internet has taken over news reporting, there is no comming back...
Adding tech news or something like that wont help them, because what
The trees will be saved...
To newspaper editors - Take advantage of these strongpoints! You can't scoop the tv news stations, so why don't you act like you are following up on the stories? Show timelines, give lots of facts, localize and personalize the stories! Above all, though, MAKE SURE THE FACTS ARE ACCURATE!!!! If you aren't sure, DO NOT PRINT!!!! I occasionally flip on the cable news channels, but I really learn about the issues by reading a paper.
Btw, the reason I like hardcopy over web-based news is that I can fold up a paper and read articles on the way to class....
Jaeger
jaeger@se2600.org
334.se2600.org
Newspapers try to be everything to everyone, and of course fail. I assume that this least-common-denominator approach explains the lack of depth, uninteresting writing, and generic selection of stories.
I do think that the comics section is still pretty okay, though. I don't know what Katz was talking about there. This is nearly a 'killer app' for the Sunday newspaper, along with the weekend ads.
But I can find what I want, when I want online. And I can email the author with questions or criticisms. It's niche marketing again, just like John Katz with his Mountain book. I take an active role in finding products, including information, rather than hoping in vain it will come to me. Cheaper for the publisher, better for me. Furthermore, I can easily archive the interesting bits. As soon as information is relegated to print, it dies. It's too hard to mess with printed data.
We still need reporters and editors. There is a profound lack of strong journalism in tech areas on the web. This applies to both writing ability and verification of facts. But these areas are quickly improving.
The best reason to make a transition away from printed words soon is environmental. The points above are fringe benefits. Our world would be better off with less printed material. If you recycle newspapers, you know how fast they accumulate. Now multiply that by the NYT subscription base, as well as all the other newspapers. This is one of the easiest ways to make a huge improvement in resource consumption and waste reduction, with few (if any) real drawbacks.
We still need reporters and editors.
A newspaper gives me a lot of things that I just can't get from other sources - chiefly portability. There is no easily readable source available that is as light, malleable, flexible and convenient as a newspaper.
A news paper allows me to read the news in depth at my leisure wherever I am. Television news does not give me depth, except for the extraordinary Newshour with Jim Lehrer, or similar shows, and then they must sacrifice breadth. The web can give me both depth and breadth, but is not convenient to read on the bus, at a bar, while walking, sitting on the couch, or any of a myriad places where I regularly like to catch up on things.
I don't expect a general interest media like newspapers to give me the best and most up to date information about narrow interest fields such as intellectual property rights, new chip designs or DeCSS - that's what narrow interest media, like /. are for. It is worthy of note that while /. cites the New York Times on an almost daily basis, the NYT cites /. only about once a week or so - but they do cite /., which belies the claim that the "old media" is clueless.
You may just as well argue the death of any of the "old" media, as has been done over and over, as each new media arises to claim that it will replace all that preceded it. Newpapers didn't die when radio was invented - even though radio told a waiting world of the sinking of the Titanic or the crash of the Hindenberg well before any newspaper could. And T.V. didn't replace radio, nor the web replace T.V.
The human mind is amazingly adept at finding and assimilating new tools, and developing to use the best tools for any given job. The media world is no less of a choice of tools than any other realm of human existence - there is a place in it for all of the media which we have invented.
Just try to name a form of media which has been invented which is no longer in use! Morse code, semifore, flags - still used. Tabloid, broadsheet, magazine, roto-gravure - still used. Radio, television, videotext - still used.
Let's not be such fools that we rush yet again to write the obituaries and requium of still thriving and usefull media.
I am now going to sign off, fold up my portable news source, put it in my pocket, and take it to read in a public place - where I will learn many things from reading it which virtually none of those around me know, 'cause their too busy with the tele and the web.
-30-
All opinions expressed are mine, if you want them it'll cost you.
But lately I've noticed that I am increasingly spending quarters to buy the LA Times (hey, it's the major local paper in my area) instead of reading it exclusively on-line. Afterall, the LA Times web site offers a "Print Edition" on-line. But I don't like it. Actually, I get little or no pleasure from reading newspaper sites versus reading the paper. This has been nagging at me, but until you asked, I hadn't really thought about why.
I find myself reading the paper for an hour at a time (I only read the Front and Business Sections) while my online news checking is in short 10 minute bursts. Even when I'm on the LA Times site I spend less than half the time than when I have the paper in front of me.
The paper draws me in. I find myself reading stories that I wouldn't read on-line. On-line I read those stories which appeal from the headline. In print, I often read the end of a story and move to the front to get the context.
Oh. That's it. I like to read from back to front. When I finish a story, I am usually on a different page than when I started and there is the end of another story adjacent that attracts me enough to find the front of it. This cycle repeats itself.
I am returning to the paper because I am broadened by the "random accessibility" of the pages versus the start-at -the-beginning-or-forget-it method of the on-line realm.
The on-line realm dictates the path I take to read, so I only go down paths that initially interest me. Narrow, targeted, efficient. The paper is open and I set the path of entry, exit and re-entry.
I'll never give up obsessively checking Rueters and AP news wires online but now I know why I am more fond of the paper in front of me than the online print edition of the same. Thanks for asking.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
...lounging on the couch with a section of the paper.
It's hard to do that with a computer. You'd worry if you spilt your coffee. And you can't trade sections with your sweetie.
I don't read the dailies much (and more often online when I do) but I am totally addicted to Saturday's Sydney Morning Herald. They have a good review of the week's news, with more in-depth articles than you get during the week.
No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up.
Seems that the gurus over at MIT's artificial intelligence lab have fixed the bugs in katzbot, this new release (v. 2.01) seems to be back to the old style: long winded, irrelevant, rambling, no data.
They fixed the random association module, restricting it to media, corporate, and online subjects again. Phew! I thought we were going to have to suffer from regular, laconic articles about the latest box office blunder, or internet geography forever.
Many thanks to the bright boys at MIT. Your new project is much better. I hope the update has taught you a lesson in constructing inexpert systems. Let me know when the next release occurs.
First of all, I've read newspapers since I started reading at about age four.. in the usual way to acquaintance: comics, sports, news headlines, news analysis, finance, and cultural pages [in that order]. .. or Swedish Daily News for those abroad http://www.dn.se ].
I've always favoured the 'stockier' kind of papers.. lots of text in small print and long articles [the one in question is Dagens Nyheter
It is very much a morning habit, can't live without it really. No one funks with me [and lives to tell] if my newspaper hasn't arrived any particular morning. The *kaplunk* in the snailmailbox at around 5.00 am actually does make me sleep better too, believe it or not :)
Can still remember the newspaper which came in on March 1st 1986, 3.5 hrs after the assasination of Swedish Prime Minister [I was 9 at the time, but always the first to read]
Slashdot, CNN, Salon etc. are all fine services, but things don't seem really _real_ until I can smell the ink on a fresh paper. This one did. A quality newspaper enrolls journalists with integrity and analytical skill beside the obvious need for good writing ability. Unfortunately this side is slacking in todays show-me-the-money world. AOL/Time-Warner doesn't pose things in a better view either..
But in my general experience printed [news-]papers review and check the stories to run a wee bit more than online ones, simple because they have more time to.
Some other notes: since the totally free morning newspaper Metro [ http://www.metro.se ] started distribution in the Stockholm subway system [in 1993 I think], there have been several surveys that more or less confirmed that newspaper reading has risen in the general population and _especially_ among kids and young adults .. a group otherwise continously falling when it comes to newspaper reading and reading in general.
Albeit a bit short in long analytical articles, Metro still poses a good newsservice to an awakening town [especially since it linked into the local car, bus and subway status news].
Something is still better than nothing, isn't it?
Another good thing about newspapers, besides the already much-stated possibility for local news coverage, is when it comes in separated parts; so dad can hunk over the sports, my kid sister over the comics, me the latest NASDAQ (' Profits?!! What profits? This is an e-company dude, we love to waste money! That makes my business card look good! ') whats and what-nots ...
... and then switch as the family members finish with their particular piece.
Try do that with a 17".
In short: I choose to read newspapers for the reason of sanity, convenience, habit.. and trustworthyness.
btw, try reading the morning newspaper after killing your netlink but before going to bed at 5.30 am. I find it pretty good to the head to finalize things in this way before the end of the working day..
I read two newspapers daily. And I used to ponder on getting subscription to a third one, when I had a little more time.
No way I'd spend my time reading a newspaper on the web, if it were available in paper. The web may be already be there, but computers aren't. Paper is convenient.
(8-DCS)
At this moment in media history, newspapers have never been more pressed to define themselves, or done a worse job.
or
They don't tell us things we don't know. They don't offer us good writing or strong opinion. They don't even have good comics any more.
or
Newspapers are the scolds of the Digital Age, shrieking and clucking about a changing world (the Net, the Web, movies, TV shows, rap, hip-hop, kids today) like Temperance Ladies wandering into a bar.
Though such vast, unprovable overgeneralizations might be a decent starting point for discussion (my usual MO for a Katz article is to skip directly to the comments) they do little to enshrine Katz as a commentator worth my time -- unlike, say, a mere newspaper columnists like Gwynne Dyer.
Finally, if you think newspapers are missing the boat on cyberculture, then why don't you try pitching them stories about cyberculture?
My Wife gets that Sunday Newspaper for coupons. I stopped using the Newspaper to get jobs three or four years ago. I will sometimes read the Sunday Washington Post, not for news but for commentary, travel reviews and book reviews.
I will not go back to Newspapers for News, it isn't fast enough. I would go back to Newspapers for good editorial and analysis articles on relevant supbject matter. I will not read fluff in Newspapers, I get that on Websites and TV.
I also like Newspapers with local articles and stories. I can't get that on a website yet. So coupons, good in depth articles and local issues. Got it, good, I still believe you will fail to deliver on it.
I'm pretty sure everybody remembers when the shift in web page design came. A few years back, just about every site on the internet was white on black. Or white on a starry background (there's some geek influence for you :). But somewhere between then and now, the general consensus changed and web sites shifted to black on white, like print.
Now, I'm not denying that white background web sites can be mighty pretty. But is this really the best decision? On print media, white was the obvious choice, because it's easier to make the ink dark and write on a light surface then to make the ink light and write on a dark surface. Black ink was probably also easier to make - of course, this is just an assumption, but i'd bet that it is.
And since paper is all white now, white on black doesn't make much sense, because the black ink bleeds into the white text, making it that much harder to read.
Now, on a CRT, it's the exact opposite from paper. You have to color in the white and leave the black blank. Which means not only that you have a washout of the black, but you have the monitor giving off more radiation into our precious little eyeballs. I'd be willing to bet that this makes it harder to read.
So why has the print sensibility been forced onto the monitor? It could be that we're more accustomed to it, so it's a bit more pleasing to the eyes. And since all the early sites were white on black, black on white looked much more "respectable" for the first web sites that wished to be taken seriously. However, I think that it *does* make internet content that much more of a pain to read. As I speak, even the black on gray text box I'm writing in is a lot more pleasant to read than the page surrounding it, because the rest just burns into my eyes.
Anyways, I read all of that somewhere before, so it's not like it's original, but I thought it was relevant. Anybody know where I read it? :)
A similar comment was marked down as "Troll" earlier, and I can't honestly understand why -- do people find archival unimportant? Or are sites really doing a better job archiving than I thought? I'd rather have somebody post to correction than moderate down a legitimate concern...
Ok, call me old school if you want. Still, when I am sitting back on a Sunday morning with a pot of coffee and my toddler rampaging all over the house, there is something nice about chilling with the Sunday paper.
The laptop is cumbersome and the kid tends to rip through the cords with wild eyed abandon. He loves watching the laptop tumble off the kitchen table while I am getting another cup of java.
Besides, there is something nice and tactile about holding that paper in your hand and planting myself on the sofa to sit back and take in the world as presented to me by the Atlanta Journal Constipation.
ACK
I realized a very long time ago that I was wasting my time reading daily newspapers. The news wasn't new, really, and moreover it wasn't digested enough to make it worthwhile. So I stopped subscribing to the daily newspaper and used the time for being with my family. That was far more gratifying.
The breaking news were mostly stale when I read it in the paper. Many times I and everyone else knew at least as much from electronic media such as TV and radio.
Today we have the web and other internet resources to supplement and to some extent surpass the traditional TV and radio news sources. Newspapers get left behind even more.
On the other hand, many stories aren't covered in a regular newspaper in a way that makes it worthwhile for me. For the most part I couldn't care less about the latest troop movements in Kosovo. But I want context, background, analysis and such; the big picture. Dailies never gave me enough of that at all. Neither do dedicated news resources on the web today. However, weeklies and monthlies really shine here, as do a host of non-news web sites, many of which are carefully tended by amateurs. On the web, I especially appreciate the heavy biases of many site authors, a quality that has all but vanished from the print press of today. I can balance between conflicting opinions myself. No need for an editor, thank you.
When I stopped reading daily newspapers fifteen years ago, I also felt that the sheer amount of 'news' in a daily was a burden on me, occupying way too much of my attention. Many facts didn't pertain to my life, in fact did not matter to most people around me and were plainly beyond my reach of influence, even if I'd care. So why bother?
Today, I am not reading a daily, not listening to radio news, not watching TV news (don't own a TV, actually) and not reading much news on the internet. I feel very much lighter than when I was fully immersed in all the heavy stuff other people felt/decided would be of interest to me. A lot of mind clutter is gone.
Have I ever missed reading a daily newspaper? No, not once. I have bought a paper on occasion, if I thought I'd really wanted to check out an issue.
Am I feeling badly informed? Hell no. News of the really important variety has a way of filtering through society and reaching people whether they actively seek it out or not. People's collective filtering ability is simply marvelous. I have been very aware of many truly important events, such as the fall of the Berlin wall, the start of the Gulf war, the whole Kosovo thing and many others, even if noone explicitly reminded me to check them out.
On the other hand, I have hours of free time each day to devote to more wholesome tasks, such as caring for my wife and kids, looking after the house, spending time with friends, etc. Most importantly, my mind is not occupied with totally useless and badly connected factoids that don't pertain to my life in the first place.
I read the New York Times every day. I read /. and some other internet news sources most every day, too. And I really don't think that they are in competition with each other.
/. because it brings together a wide variety of information in an easy to use package, information that before I had to read WIRED, 2600, and Science to get. So in this sense, internet publications are in competition with magazines, not newspapers. But /. is unique among newspapers, in the variety of information that it provides, while still appealing to such a specific group of people.
I like
I have a difficult time finding the same value in the online version of a newspaper as the paper version. I tried reading the internet version of the New York Times for a while - it was nice to get the headlines earlier, but it was so difficult to read. There is so much less text on the screen than there is on the same area of paper, which makes it much more difficult to glace ahead to the end of the article, or to refer to something previously stated. Yes, it is possible to use the back button, or scroll, but that requires some physical action, whereas the print version needs only the movement of the eyes. Perhaps a big expensive monitor would solve these problems. It still would not provide the same value as the print newspaper.
I can get the New York Times in almost every city I go to, wherever I am, without having to worry about connecting to the internet, without even being anywhere near a computer. It is lightweight, flexible, and easy to use. It is extremely portable, rugged, and the size is right. Give me a laptop that weighs a pound an has a 14 x 22 screen, and I will switch in a second. Given all this, it does not seem, for me, that electronic newspapers are in competition with print ones.
If anything, online newspapers are in competition with the radio. I like the five minute summary NPR provides on the hour of the days news events. Before it was available as RealAudio on demand, I used the digital newspapers for the same purpose, to get the headline news. Now that I can get that audio at any time, I do not use the internet newspapers so much. This illustrates the advantage of radio (at least quality radio) over internet publication - it is interesting, provides the news in a much more timely manner than print, and does not require much interaction.
The point here has become a bit convoluted - but I think it is made.
The Gazette, the little local newspaper, shows up once a day, and we all glance at it just to make sure the First Baptist Church of Galax hasn't published our name on their lynching list, but generally we don't read it.
On the other hand, once a week the Economist shows up. They still claim to be a newspaper, even though they use a format that makes really lousy herring-wrapper (but a lot of newspapers aren't much use for that or starting fires anymore). When it arrives, the entire family goes into hunter mode trying to get it first to read. Why?
The Economist is generally readable (their English isn't nearly as abominable as what many American newspapers publish). They don't bore their readers with descriptions of the latest scandal at the Whitehouse in America or in Buckingham Palace in England or the Sultan's Harem in wherever. They talk about economic state, politics, wars, and major legal battles. Their technology section isn't very large but it generally has something interesting.
Why is my family so much more enthusiastic about the Economist than the NYT or the Globe? Because we don't care what little scandal has cropped up in America. There is a lot more to the world, and until large newspapers get themselves focused correctly, and go back to printing sheets that are useful as herring-wrapper and fire-starter, the Economist remains our newspaper of choice. Let's keep the world in scale: America is just one of many countries, English is one of many languages, and there's a lot more to the news than what's going on in this country.
Someone is bound to point out that there is a version of the Economist online that you can access with your Economist subscription. That's fine and dandy, and it means I can send a really good article to my friends more easily, but the printed paper is far more pleasant to read. It's hard to put a monitor down next to your bowl of soup at lunch or curl up with it at night.
What should newspapers do to try to improve circulation? Report what's going on in the world instead of what the government feeds to them to publish, stop giving frontpage coverage to scandals with public officials that are no one's business but those involved, and maybe have an interesting technology column once in a while. Inevitably the newspaper will not be the center of technology news. It traditionally has focused on political and economic news. While these topics are becoming ever more closely linked to technology in many areas, there is still a large difference between technology news and political news.
Anyway, I think that what few useful elements of newspapers there are are easily found online in a much more accessible form. When I get a PalmPilot in a couple of months, I'll just get something like AvantGo and I will never touch a newspaper again.
Good riddance.
-------------------------
Stupid people suck.
along with an extremely long article. Too long, though. Anyways, I do read on a regualr basis, but once non-phone line internet services take over, everyone will be reading over the net. 100 years from now, if we keep up this rate, human contact will be next to nil. But whatcha gonna do?
"As many of you know, I was very instrumental in the founding of the Internet" --Al Gore to Katie Couric 3/99
Newspapers have to appeal to too many people. I live in a the original News Corporation one paper town so perhaps others have it better.
Newspapers are trying to appeal to everyone and noone and lose me in the stupidity and irrelevance of the shit they write. Often they bow to commercial interest (undeclared infomercials), or worse are plain lazy and don't check their facts.
The week of Diana (may she rot in peace) front pages showed just how much they valued news coverage vs selling to collectors. Weeks later Mother Theresa got a small column buried somehwere after page three. I hate to think how many weak minds they are shaping.
The only paper I read reliably is the Tuesday Australian as it is 2/3 computer industry news and it balances some of the vested interests with columns from The Australian Unix users group and the Australian Telecommunications Users Group. Most of it I have read on the Net first but it is good reinforcement.
I am very aware that I am lacking informed general news coverage but I generally just watch late night TV news. If it pisses me off I can always flick to the playstation and I don't have to pay for a piece of environmental vandalism as an added bonus.
And I used to like Newspapers and was a subsciber.
I subscribe to our local newspaper and have for years, but I prefer to read the local paper on their web site. They just don't put it all online - which tells me they "get it" but they're cautious. I disagree with what Mr. Katz is trying to say about what and how newspapers cover contemporary culture. It's not that they can't or don't - they do when they are forced to by competition. And in areas like mine where a there's only a single local paper, that competition comes from other and diverse media. My main complaint with newspapers is the "ink and paper" mentality. They define themselves by the physical product - wrong answer. In the larger papers we saw the transition years ago from "newspaper publisher" to "news organization". The open forum style works on /. to inform and add value, but this is because it's "balanced" by the moderated "edited" publications. Think for a moment about the sources of these "this just in" nuggets on /. and you'll see what I mean. The discussions here derive a large measure of their value from our "informed" opinions regarding "established" items of news initially reported elsewhere - usually by card carrying "news organizations". Ask yourself how many times have you read, or written, "Read the damn reference before you post you idiot!" To all those local and regional news_papers_ I send this wakeup call: "It's the news stupid!" not the paper!
Every change is not progress, but there is no progress without change.
The fact of the matter is that Slashdot, DrudgeReport, Useless News and WOrld Distort, CNN online, and etc. are in the same place as my ICQ, email, ftp, and telnet access: on my desk.
Here at college, I don't have a subscription to printed press cause I don't need 'em. Not to mention my Inet access is reasonably fast (T1 Ethernet) and cheap (I pay nothing).
Conclusion: printed press is inefficient for my needs and quite frankly has never even been considered.
Oversoul
i read newspapers for good, well written, contextful, articles on current issues. what matters is not the bleeding-edge news, but well researched, well attributed, well edited articles on issues from around the globe which lie behind the bleeding-edge news. if X and Y have just gone to war, i'll find out about it on the web. what i won't find out (or not yet) is the relationship between the ethnic tensions over the last thousand years, the collapse of a recent tyrannical government in the area and the failure of this years rains have lead them to this point.
in short, what i read newspapers for is good journalism, which is medium independent, but which the newspapers currently have a monopoly on.
The "answer" should be obvious. newspapers cannot
"compete" with online news.
50 years ago, I'm sure radio stations were wondering: "How can we best compete with television?". Then, just as now, the answer is: "you cannot".
If you are at home, you turn on the television.
If you are in a car,or train, or whereever, you turn on the radio.
Similarly, if you are at home, or incredibly well-connected, you will go to the net for news.
Otherwise, if you are on vacation to hicksville, or on the train, or wherever else; you might pick up a newspaper.
Just as with television, it is inevitable that all but the poorest people will gravitate towards this behaviour.
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!
Eric
This is something that I've noticed increasingly over the last couple of years, and the same thing is happening to TV.
There, quite simply, isn't anything that appears in the newspapers or on TV news broadcasts, that wasn't on the internet the day before yesterday.
I'm sick of seeing a story pop up on in a local newspaper or nightly news segment on the TV, 3-4 days or a week after I read pretty much the same story on CNN on the net.
There may be a fraction more information avaliable, but generally they are a straight rehash of CNN's coverage.
Which leads me to my second problem. There is no independence in news gathering these days. Whether its the fault of all of the media mergers over the last few years or not I don't know, but the problem is that everyone is using the same news wires to generate their stories... so what you end up with 100's of newspapers and TV stations sprout ing the same stuff over and over.
Prior to the net, that was ok, because physical location dictated the target audience. That's no longer the case. From Ballarat, Australia, I can read the New York Times , or CNN just as easy as I can buy the Melbourne Age or the Ballarat Courier. In fact, the only thing these papers can give me that I can't get elsewhere online is local content.
As I see it, there a two choices that can be made to keep a newspaper relevant over the next few years. Either start concentrating on local content and local issues, or play with the big boys and start generating your own news... ie. maybe start looking into the issues raised by cnn, ap and reuters, and provide something extra rather than just regurgitating the story, which is what every newspaper around the world seems to be doing these days....
Oh... and one other thing... so toning everything (stories AND editorial content) down in an attempt to keep your advertisers happy. If a newspaper anywhere was to give an accurate depiction of what is happening with DeCSS, then I'd buy a years subscription from them...
'sapientia potestas est'
I don't read newspapers because they only contain reports of the negative aspects of human life. They rarely contain a positive or constructive side of any story. That's not really the publishers fault; the truth is that positive papers do not sell. We (but not me) want to read about disasters, and drug-busts, and murders, and so on. Newspapers are full of this and not much else. The human race sucks and we will defeat you all one day!!!
I read my local newspaper because there are things in it that wouldn't be covered in the national news papers. For everything I use the net. This took on new meaning for me since I had to turn to the hindustan times to find out information about the floods in India which were completely ignored by the media here.
I don't read daily Newspapers because I can't get the news I want in a format that I like. I read the Guardian Weekly, a weekly news digest out of the UK, as the ratio of ads and fluff to news is acceptable. I hate flipping through the front section of a paper and finding maybe one article of interest, interspersed with ads and whatnot. I'm willing to pay the relatively high cost of the Guardian Weekly to avoid this problem.
Also, I read a lot of editoral mags like The Nation and Science News, as these help me similarly to separate the wheat from the chaff.
The daily newspaper will only compete when it's concise and relevant. Personally I prefer to have a weekly summary to a lot of blather daily. If I want that I can just hop on the Internet any old time.
Unequivocally
First id like to say that i dont read the paper on the web or on phsyical paper. I do use my yahoo which gives me a low down on real news. I lived in san jose for a long time and occasionaly would view there website, but they ask me to fill a web form out which to me means spam. New york times and Wall street journal do the same. Washington post (i live near there now) doesnt so I occasionally will read an article there but to be honest most of the journalists dont seem to get the real issues. In every circle that effects the public with the exception of the media there is a removal mechanism. Political officers can be removed, Doctors can have there medical license revoked, and Lawyers can be disbarred (not that the later happens nearly enough). The press is pretty much free to report whatever they want with no checks or balances. One would argue you need a press card but I have one and im not part of the press. Maybe if there was some check system in place the media would have more appeal. In the end i want to get my news but i dont want to wade through hundreds of pages of stuff I dont want. I want it tailored to me, I want a limit on the ads, I want thought and actual research into articles and perhaps occasionally both sides of the story. Most of the time I see a paper with "Hackers did this and it is evil" without even a thought to motivation. Sure it may be illegal but most of the time no one is harmed and a few people had smiles on there faces like when the white house had the flowered panties (think jenifer flowers) and clinton singing "getting sticky with it". I laughed a long time and the hackers were only making a statement. Of course the papers just dismissed it as evil hackers. I have seen some good articles like a recent one i found a link to off here. That was a well thought out article by someone who obviously is aware of whats going on in the world and the net. And lastly. I want a reply button, I read news here because I can reply to it. I dont really care if anyone reads it but if something sets me off or irks me or enlightens me I want to be able to respond.
I would read more media sources if i was convinced that they weren't in bed with huge corporations bent on suppressing bad reports. What we neeed is some muckrakers'. And frankly im not holding my breath.
2 reasons:
a. Most people do not have comfortable access to a computer with an internet connection, so news on paper are the only way to go.
b. Monitors suck: they're too small, hard on the eyes and unwieldy. If I know I'm going to spend a couple of hours of my time on reading something I do prefer it on paper - this way I can reposition myself anywhere and anyway I like. I suppose we will have a real portable computer (or monitor) or soon enough, but the first step is probably to have a flat screen that can be taken of its mount and put on your lap - for example - still connected by cable to the box. I suppose this is nearly possible already (- but expensive).
The way I see it, the moment it becomes just as comfortable to read from the computer as it is from paper, anyone who has the option will not bother with the paper medium. I would still like to read the longer articles, editorials and opinion pieces, but I would be happy to do it online. Once paper is irrelevant newspapers will HAVE to reinvent themselves, since they will have to adapt to being online - both in content and in how they get paid for it.
The two great secrets of success are: don't tell anyone everything that you know.
newsprint: not a chance, ink on the fingers, awkward retrieval scheme, difficult to organize and archive. reporters: as much as i enjoy the typical freewheeling net.content, i think more "professional" writers working for the net would be an enhancement. the business models are still shaking out, but although i agressively block ads with junkbuster, i also pay subscriptions for several sites that i appreciate.
The biggest problem I have with traditional news media is that it's push, and it's dependent on advertising. Basically, I have no logistically sound way to rebutt the fallacies that litter america's news stories. If the inherent ignorance of a reporter (Reporters don't know what's going on, their job is to find out and tell us. By definition, this makes them all ignorant) doesn't kill a story's credibility, the fact that they don't want to lose enough sponsors such that they cannot operate will. I, as an citizen with in-depth, specialized knowlege have no realistic way of making corrections to these stories. I can write a letter to the editor, but maybe six readers will get published (space is money). There are more than six stories/paper. On the web, I can instantly post a retort that stays with the story, and other readers can add credit/discredit. In other words, sick data gets healed without editorial meddling.
Many of us, having specialized training in a given field, have read a newspaper story related to our field that was completely false. The majority of people don't know the difference, and they live out their lives thinking that the version in the story is true. This hurts us more than it helps us.
I am also reminded of the spanish american war. The push news media has the power to manufacture and capitolize on human suffering. They also can fool all of the people all of the time, if they put their minds to it.
During the Monica Lewinsky scandal, we were preparing for war in Kosovo. This was going on for over a year...the other NATO countries citizenry was informed of this. In America, the news media was enjoying quite the profit from a stained dress...they didn't care to inform us that our sons were being put in harms way.
Newspapers, then, are misleading. Sure, reading more increases literacy. However, reading newspapers resrticts a societies ability to become well informed, and degrades the stability of any democracy.
I will never subscibe to any news service. They are looking out for their own best interests. They don't even care if their actions cause the mass slaughter and maiming of our citizens (sure, footage of troops in combat in the gulf war will draw ratings, it will also tell the enemy where to aim the scud).
The only kind of news media I trust is that which follows this criteria:
A: I must be able to participate in and follow a public review process. Slashdot is such a forum...lies are exposed in under a day.
B: I should be able to check up on the reporter's sources. If I can copy text out of an AP wire story and paste it into a search engine to check credibility for free, there is no logical reason for me to pay for the same wire story in a form that doensn't give me this ability.
The only advantages paper has are as follows:
A: Power failures won't take the ink off of the page.
B: I can make my own newspaper and give it to people who can't afford computers
In other words...to ensure a well informed electorate and stop the inner collapse of the American system of government (starting in Kennedy v. Nixon debate), Papers and TV news should do one of the following:
A: Stop. Go away.
B: Admit being what you're trying so hard not to...tabloids
I love humanity. Stop misleading it to your own greedy ends. Eventually we'll catch on. It's better to do it now on good terms than face mass global wrath when humankind finds out how you've bent their minds.
tack
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
The answer is a resounding no.
Papers present two major advantages over electronic forums. The first is authority. The WSJ and NYT carry a huge reputation. Your average soccer mom, subscribed to AOL, will believe "The Authorities" or "Officials" named in print over the whims of online diatribe. Chances are, if she reads online news (a big if), she gets it from CNN.com or usatoday.com.
Online forums may offer more precise, detailed, accurate information, but it takes time and energy to learn the reputations and beliefs of the core of resident gurus. Recent scandals about hoaxes, corruption, and dealing in the mainstream press have done little to tarnish their reputation, except among their equally outdated competition.
The second major advantage of print is its circulation. If you're not logged on, you can't killfile a troll. Sure, the Drudge Report may get 1e6 hits on a great day, but how many tens of millions read, hear, or watch their news using other sources?
On top of these, I would argue that the print media and boob tube flunkies provide a valuable service (value as measured by sales). They trim the fat and make a product out of the countless hundreds or thousands of possible stories each day. Go to www.drudgereport.com. Try reading all the reported news and opinion at all the sites to which he provides links. Tell me if you have enough time in one day.
Some web portals provide a clipping service, and will search archives for stories on particular topics. This is the main advantage of online news- cutting out the middle man and making what is essentially your own newspaper. Finding the right pages, search engines, etc. takes time. Learning to use them takes even more time. Why bother, when you can get it for $0.50 from a machine on the sidewalk? If you have the time, skill, and desire to get your own news, fine. Only those slacking off at work or with time to burn at home will be able.
Another big disadvantage is that you can't be online while riding the subway, eating lunch at a deli, or hear the news while commuting in your car. Time and technology may remedy this.
Your article also neglects the fact that the old media are the major generators of news. The AP, UPI, Reuters, cnn, abc, BBC, etc. are all linked and cross-linked extensively. If the in print parent goes out of business, the electronic
child will die of starvation.
The internet remains a good source of rumor and speedy access for those with time and money. Print remains an ideal medium for those without, and those who prefer the pap and propaganda to investigating on their own.
That said, I think the online community may pose a threat to one item: the specialty magazine. Hobbyists used to get mags on their hobby. The only source of interaction or feedback was the local hobby club (if there was one). Now, all the insight, tricks, etc. can be had online for free. Why pay $29.95 for it when you can ask bob@yahoo.com? I think hobbyists may have a bit more disposable income for computers, and time for their hobby, than John Q. Workingclass. This may be the real internet onslaught against the old media.
In my opinion, the newspaper (and, by extension, magazine) experience is totally different from, for instance, the Slashdot experience. By which to say, the way you read a newspaper is totally different from the way you read Slashdot.
I live in the Boston Metropolitan area, so I get the Boston Globe, which is a pretty good paper. I don't read it consistently, but I do read it, for different reasons than I read Slashdot. Slashdot is good at what it does: provide extremely up-to-date information about most of technology. The reason Slashdot is better at this than the Boston Globe is because technology is so fast-paced that by the time a printed medium is out on the streets, it's old news.
However, Slashdot is highly specialized. It doesn't need to appeal to a large audience, because it is on the web and it has the whole world as an audience. It can therefore afford to appeal to a small group: generally, technically literate, educated people with an interest in technology. The Boston Globe has to appeal to essentially everyone in the Boston Metro area, and the majority of its audience is not the same audience that Slashdot has.
This is both a Good Thing and a Bad Thing:
It's a Bad Thing because the Globe cannot compete with Slashdot when it comes to technology. This is obvious. They can't devote as much resources to it (and, since they charge money for the paper, they can't use a reader-submission system to get news), and it takes too much time to get it into print.
It's a Good Thing because they can concentrate on other topics. Also, they can print stories which are too specific for Slashdot. Case in point: I saw an article in the Globe about how every school, police, and fire station in Massachusetts was going to be wired to the internet, either through T1 or DSL. I thought this was pretty cool (it's great if you're planning on having kids in the area in the near future). I submitted said story to Slashdot, where it was rejected, I assume because it pertained only to Massachusetts residents and not to the wider audience as a whole. On another note, there was recently an article about the architects being hired lately to work on Boston's skyline. Currently, not Slashdot material, and not even something I'm normally interested in. But it caught my eye, so I read it, and I'm better off having read it because it was very interesting.
Besides that, the Globe can concentrate on topics like art, business (sometimes covered on Slashdot, but usually only companies in the technology industries...Transmeta, or RedHat, for instance), and sports (not something I'm personally interested in, besides being an obligatory Red Sox fan).
But besides these reasons, I still read printed media for one major reason: It's a lot more comfortable. Even if you have a laptop and a wireless LAN, you can not comfortably read Slashdot sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace, or curled up in a chair. And you certainly can't read it in your favorite coffee shop (unless it's one that has internet access, and you still need a laptop, which is none too comfortable to use). Until we get 'smart' paper or something equally useful, I'll stick to my paper.
(By 'equally useful' I don't mean e-books or something. I mean something light, flexible, and easy to read and use. Otherwise, it doesn't match up to my criteria)
Of course, I could suggest things to the Boston Globe to make it more appealing to me, personally. They could hire more technology writers (Cringely seems more fit to print than to post) and possibly make technology a daily section (it's currently weekly). Even if they couldn't give up to the minute news, I bet the articles they wrote would be more insightful, especially on a local level. But I can't expect them to cater to me. They have hundreds of thousands of people to please. They could care less if I don't read their paper (I'm not the only one in the household, and we certainly wouldn't be cancelling our subscription).
So basically, yes, I will read newspapers until they stop printing them.
Then again, I could be wrong.
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.
Ignore Alien Orders
I'm most certain that the same discussions took place with the advent of television and television news. Sure newspaper subscriptions may have grown smaller, but I cannot take my television on the subway for the morning commute.
The advantage of the web is it provides instaneous news from around the world. But that's also its vice, because I cannot look on slashdot to see if the bridge I cross on my way to work will have construction delays. I also cannot find the other unique local information that newspapers can provide.
Plus, the crossword puzzles are not the same online and the comics take more effort to get.
I'll still keep my subscription, and continue to savor Sunday afternoons digging through the monster sunday edition.
The Internet news sources are far from up to speed.
> let's websites carry headlines from Slashdot over.. porviding a link back to Slashdot... it's more effective than banner adds :)
:)
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
I don't actually exist.
I haven't read a newspaper in over 7 years. I'm not ignoring the world, it's just that there are so many free sources of information available, that "I" can decide on a particular story's merits/relevance as opposed to some large publishing company, that I have no need for a newspaper.
I usually hit national news three or four times a week-- NY Times, CNN, Wash. Post. Often they have the same Reuters or AP stories as the Republic, but usually there is more hard news as well as a wider range of opinion columns.
I read the London Daily Telegraph on-line almost every day, because:
- I have relatives in England and occasionally visit.
- Their international news is superb, with long thoughtful policy articles, as well as a great many amusing short fillers about cannibal warfare in New Guinea, or which politician got seen going into a whore house, etc. Here is a funny one from today:
- They have great coverage of domestic U.S. news, albeit from a jaded-British-reporter-amongst-the-Yankee-rubes perspective.
- I think they are easily the best quality newspaper in terms of their Web design. It's free (after registration) and they have on-line archives going back to 1996 or so.
Slashdot, Salon, Free Republic and the Drudge Report get regular visits too, and are nothing like real-world newspapers.-ccmay
Too much Law; not enough Order.
I read a print newspaper every morning, and get a couple of sunday papers too. Plus I subscribe to a few print magazines. The papers get recycled weekly, while I store all the magazines for future reference.
There are advantages and disadvantages for both 'old' and 'new' media... neither currently replaces the other, but they do provide complementary services.
Assuming we're talking mainly about a portable medium for reading today's news,
Laptops take too long to boot up. /. without hyperlinks?) /. posters.
We have crappy wireless connections here, so you can't read today's news on the streetcar/train, if you haven't bothered to download them before leaving home (and what's the point of
Newspaper Op-Ed writers generally have a less grating command of grammar and spelling than
Taking a laptop to the john could become messy. You can't leave laptops on train seats for other people to read when you're done with them.
Newspaper subscriptions are cheaper than laptops.
Typing in crossword puzzle answers is annoying.
Laptops don't make cool rustling sounds when you flip pages (I suppose you could record the sound and have it play when you visit a new url...)
You can't use a laptop to cushion things when moving.
You can't laptop-train a dog. (You could, but it would get expensive.)
Newspapers have longer battery lives than laptops.
You can't roll up a laptop and stuff it in your pocket.
You can't hold laptops over your head when it rains.
You can't wrap fish in a laptop.
Yes, I do read a (paper, hardcopy, etc.) newspaper every day here in Stockholm, Sweden. It's called Metro, and it's free, distributed mostly in the local subway system. Over here, it's a great success. It's been introduced in several European and South American cities, where it also seems to be doing well. Introduction in the US has, however, been prevented by, hmm, it's been a while since I read the article, a law preventing the local (I forget which city) subway company from having anything to do with newspaper distribution or some such.
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.
Funny thing, as I was logging into Slashdot, I was also reading the paper. Well, ok. I was reading the funnies, and scanning the front page.
The thing is, this newspaper (Stars and Stripes: Asia) seems to be made up of rehashed press releases and stories off the wire. Of course, with its main selling point being the only English paper avalable in Korea, it doesn't have to do any true reporting.
Which is what I think newspapers will have to do in the future. I think that in order to survive, newspapers will have to do more investigative reporting; more in depth articles. Less sensationalism or canned press releases. And less news off the wire. Sell the service of having someone go out and find out whats actually happening. And remeber, most ppl read a newspaper with a salt-shaker, so trust is something they'll have to reclaim.
--Cam
PS Don't forget the comics and humor articles... we are a pleasure centered species:)
All jocks think about is sports. All nerds think about is sex.
I agree that newspapers are not nearly as central a media as they once were. It is well accepted by almost all media professionals that newspapers no longer break the news. The roll of the newspaper has evolved into providing the details that can't fit in a 30-second news blurb. I think most editors-in-chief would agree with this.
As for myself, I read the online version of the Washington Post everyday. My two main reasons are:
1. It's free
2. It's easy to search for what I want to read
I usually approach the online newspaper with the intention of reading the details about the stories I heard on the news the night before.
As for the future of newspapers, I think they will stick around for a while, but I don't think they will last forever. Print newspaper readers are getting older, and they are not being replaced. Eventually, print newspaper readers will die off, and there will be no demand for them anymore.
However, people are still going to want somewhere to turn to read the details about the stories they hear on the TV news, and online newspapers will probably flourish and take over the "print" newspaper market.
But that's not why. We use all forms of information. I don't expect my newspaper to be the cutting edge in late news. I want it to offer depth, opinion, local news and items of intersest I can't get anywhere. Are some boring, Yes. But is all web or TV good? When I'm traveling, or laying around on a Sunday-nothing beats holding a paper. And,I can't drag other media to the bathroom yet. It's not about us against them. I use all forms of media and I utilize each to it's best potential. Newspapers happpen to be a part of that.
The problem is that most newspapers don't get new media. And they are about to lose a whole lot of writers to new media projects.
Want to know why Quake players are demonized, read the uninformed opinions in your local newspaper.
After working on the Netslaves site for the last few months, I have a nice long list on what is wrong with newspapers, magazines and tv. Most of it centers on non-technical people masturbating in print over technology.They don't read, they don't research, they don't learn about the subject they cover.
I may not code Linux, but I know why it matters and what it does. Because I bothered to ask people. A lot of so-called tech journalists wouldn't know Debian from PalmOS.
Then they cover the executives of companies like they were Jimi Hendrix in 1969. They are gods who never make a mistake. So what if Amazon is really a sweatshop with a tech face? Jeff Bezos is cool, man.
Sure, I read newspapers. every day. They're online and free. And I buy my local paper to check the comics and follow local news.
But the future of newspapers is the wrong question.
The question is what kind of news will you want and will pay for. If you can buy a website for a billion dollars, you certainly can fund local newspapers for far less.
Some of the people posting here will eventually have a lot of money. They will have plenty of choices on what to do with that money. If you dislike the news you read or think it doesn't serve you, there is no law preventing you from going into the news business. The web lowers the cost of entry.
It's not a passive question. Netslaves has already challenged the happy talk and business porn which passes for tech journalism and we're going to do a lot more of it. There is nothing, nothing stopping you from starting a website and challenging the news you read.
Times have changed. Anyone can go online and publish. If you want to spend the time and the effort, you can challenge anything you read or see. You don't have to accept it.
I worry less about newspapers than news, and when I look around the web, I see a lot fewer voices and ideas than that could be out there. Newspapers are not built in stone. They are living things. If you don't trust the news you get, challenge it. When you get enough cash, fight then on even terms.
The news will always be around. How it's presented is increasingly up to you.
Steve Gilliard gilliard@bigfoot.com
Yeah, I read the local fishwrapper. I can skim it while eating brekker or on the can. Also read the local alternative daily. Both have websites with the same content, but for random access and speed of reading the papers have it all over sitting at a desk reading a phosphorescent version.
"A gun is a tool, Marian. No better, no worse than any other tool. An axe, a shovel, or anything." Shane (1953)
Teenage Research Unlimited, Fall 1999: "Almost 7 out of 10 (69%) teens read a daily newspaper in the past week. Teens rely on newspapers most for advertising about various products and services." Graph shows teens rely on newspapers from a low of 40% for electionics (internet 6%) to a high of 88% of jobs (internet 2%) PFBBT!
1. Newspapers can be used to wrap fish and chips. 2. You can use newspaper to clean mud, politicians, etc off your shoes. 3. Newspapers can be used to keep your butt warm while fishing. 4. Page 3. Did anyone mention page 3? 5. Good newspapers have stuff about cricket, rugby and fishing in em. 6. Newspapers are useful for swatting flies, bugs, politicians etc. 7. Your kids can have fun making stuff from the funny pictures. 8. All that re-cycling is good for the environment... isn't it. 9. Its hard for spooks to make fund raiser scares from dumb plaintext. 10. You find freshly baited websites, that you missed on the billboards. Ok, they're weakly typed reasons, I tried...
There is no god; get over it already! Never exchange a walk on part in the war, for a lead role in a cage.
I may appear to be biased since I am a member of the newspaper industry, but I would like to point out the following: 1) Lumping all newspapers together and making blanket statements about them is unfair -- I agree that many suffer from the problems you describe. But there are some that do a better job than others at attracting readers through investigative or expanded reporting, and visually appealing layout & design. One of the issues is that the newspaper is something that your parents and grandparents grew up with when there weren't a lot of other options like you have today. And most newspapers don't want to risk losing them, so they don't "fix what ain't broke." However, I agree that they need to draw in new and younger readers, break the barriers to do so and find ways to attract them, whether it be through the internet, the print product or both. However, your parents and grandparents would bombard our news editors with complaints if we suddenly became "Wired". So we often walk the tightrope in an attempt to appeal to as many folks as we can without allienating others. Our weekly entertainment guides have shown that this can be accomplished -- a large percentage of all age groups read this very targeted section. We need to find other ways of doing that with technology-related sections and such. More and more of the 50+ age segment are now using computers and the internet -- again a topic with interest by the masses. 2) Believe it or not, there is still a larger quantity of people 18-34 in age reading the local community newspaper throughout the week, than there are using any one other specific information source -- it's a very fragmented world out there in broadcast and online. 3) No one else does the kind of local, local reporting that a newspaper does -- granted a lot of that is now on their online site as well, but to compare the newspaper reports to those on CNN or your local TV station is like apples and oranges -- you either won't find it all in those places or it will be a very abbreviated version. So I don't agree that newspapers tell you things that you already know -- you only know the headline and the highlights most of the time -- newspapers (or their online sites) give you the details and the depth so that you get the whole story -- the complete story. And you find it all in one place -- rather than having to go from this site to this site to get what you are interested in. 4) Anyone who doesn't think that newspapers are changing in content, look or mission, should go to a library and compare a newspaper from a decade ago (or even a few years back) to the one you get today. Many of the large-to-medium newspapers have made significant improvements to their print and online products -- and continue to do so. USA Today has lead the way in that area and even the Washington Post -- one the country's more traditional papers -- has evolved. So if you haven't checked it out lately -- give your local daily newspaper a chance and pick one up. Granted, you may not need, want or like all of it -- just pick and choose what you do like or find useful -- no one is forcing you to read the whole thing or to read it every single day. Treat is like you do the internet -- bookmark your "favorites" and go back to them as often as you wish. 5) Focus groups and marketing sessions are only as good and as useful as you make them be. If newspapers don't make a concerted effort to get a good mixture of people that are reflective of their community or the audience they want to attract to participate in the group sessions, then the sessions are mostly useless. But it isn't easy getting people in the 18-34 age group to provide input and participate in this way -- most are too busy, don't care, etc. 6) It's still much easier to take the paper with you to the john, or on the subway. Obviously, you can take a book or a magazine as well, but if you truly want to know what is happening in your own community -- from local news to shopping to entertainment, the newspaper is the most portable, convenient, quick and inexpensive way to get that information.
News papers will die "it's a mathmatical certanty" but its all just a question of when, not if! Unless of corse, the whole deffinition of news papers change and they (stop being made of paper) and start being electronic mail instead, downloaded daily on your palm pilot or something of that nature...Then mabie there might be hope for the New York Times after all...