Internet is Killing the Newspaper

jose parinas writes "MediaDailyNews is reporting that 2005 will go down as one of the worst newspaper years in history, and 2006 doesn't look promising. Online media is continuously generating more readership and ad dollars, but currently only accounts for 5% of total newspaper revenues."

Comments

Newspaper is getting too wide anyhow

[Anonymous Coward]

I like how we can adblock ads on the internet, but something like that will never happen with the paper - and we pay for it as well.

Re:Newspaper is getting too wide anyhow

[HermanAB]

It is very easy to do ad blocking in a newspaper - just don't open the classified section.

What do you expect?

[rscoggin]

Does it really matter? Most newspapers offer much (if not all) of their content online. All that matters is ad revenue, and they can even get around the cost of printing and distribution if they publish to the web. I see a transition, not a death.

Re:What do you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Printed media is a needless waste of resources. How much paper do we waste every day on newspapers? How many tons?

Re:What do you expect?

[cluckshot]

I wish it were a transition. These guys are dying. The reason is simple, they will not server their customers. They continue to publish crappy articles usually against any decent enterprise and as such lose their readers daily. More and more they have become ads only. I can search ads without these turkeys.

Re:What do you expect?

[Yehooti]

Was the time, recently actually, when I had to start my day with the newspaper. Too many late deliveries, and I discovered that with my laptop, I could still sit on the throne in the morning and read the latest news. Out went the paper (that part anyway). They still bug me regularly to subscribe again, but not a chance.

Re:What do you expect?

[Spock the Baptist]

All very true, but I don't think that you'll be swatting flies with your laptop...

Re:What do you expect?

[Agarax]

I hope you never make anyone else touch your laptop. .

Re:What do you expect?

[plover]

It's all pulpwood, grown expressly for the purpose of becoming newsprint. It's a farm crop, like corn or beans. And much of the newsprint is recycled, making it even less of an issue.

I'm not saying electronic delivery isn't much less of an expense (both in terms of resources and energy to make and deliver them), I'm just saying that it's not like anyone is denuding virgin forests of 200-year-old trees just to make a few bird cage liners.

Re:What do you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

All very true, but I don't think that you'll be swatting flies with your laptop...

That's what Infoweek is for.

Re:What do you expect?

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Newspapers are dying? Hmmm, let's see.

(opens newspaper)

NATALIE HOLLOWAY
Natalie
Natalie
Natalie
(repeat for weeks)

Oh wait, OJ was 10 years ago???

OJ Simpson! Yay

(repeat that for weeks)

I guess you are right. Newspapers really are sucky, and they are making us stupid. Let's all stop lamenting their death and just ask ourselves why don't they just hurry up and die.

Re:What do you expect?

[porksoda]

newspapers are not a waste. junk mail adverts are a waste.

Re:What do you expect?

[Daxster]

It's all pulpwood, grown expressly for the purpose of becoming newsprint. It's a farm crop, like corn or beans.

I won't deny that you have a point of newspapers using recycled paper, but I live in an area that has most profits generated from pulp mills and logging. Simply put - the trees are not on a farm, they're first-growth temperate rainforest trees. Although selective logging has been introduced, the logging companies and pulp mills are interested in profits, so many areas are clearcut when they can't be seen by the public (remote areas behind mountains, etc).
Newspapers do use a lot of resources :-(

Re:What do you expect?

[AvitarX]

no, junk mail subsidizes my mail costs.

Re:What do you expect?

[Mesinjah]

It's about time! What a waste of resources, are we in the 1800's here? Hello... 21st century wakeup call to newspaper companies - You won't last forever

Re:What do you expect?

[ctr2sprt]

They won't all die, just the bad ones. Which is, frankly, fine by me. After ten years of reading nothing but The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe (sports section), and The New York Times, I can't stand anything else. The writing is just so abysmally poor that I throw the paper down in disgust ten seconds after picking it up.

Quality stuff will always survive in some form. I'm least worried about the WSJ, which is probably the smallest of the three papers I read. As you'd expect from a business-oriented newspaper, they got their business model straight from the get-go, and they've done very well with it - as of 2002, they were the most popular subscription service on the Internet.

- Obviously a happy subscriber to WSJ.com, but nothing more.

Re:What do you expect?

[Joe Random]

Simply put - the trees are not on a farm, they're first-growth temperate rainforest trees.

They may not be on a traditional farm-type piece of land, but they usually are replanted after harvesting, and the same location is re-harvested whenever possible. So the grandparent was right when he stated that pulpwood is a farm crop.

And I don't see what clearcutting has to do with it. As long as it's not a eyesore (and you state that it's usually done in remote areas) then it generally makes sense to harvest all of the crop of trees. The only exception I can think of is that, in some circumstances, erosion might be worsened by clearcutting. However, as you said, many companies are now practicing selective logging, probably for that exact reason.

Re:What do you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

I see your point but I can't help but wonder how many millions of acres of land are being used for these tree farms that could have been left as wilderness. If there was no longer a need for paper, couldn't some of this land eventually become "virgin forests of 200-year-old trees" again?

It still seems like an enourmous waste to me.

Re:What do you expect?

[Hamdog]

It IS a waste, an avoidable one. Another problem is, a lot of the newsprint isn't being recycled, it ends up in landfills.

Re:What do you expect?

[tlyons]

I think there are a few reasons newspapers' decline does matter: 1) Sure, the paper editions are being replaced by websites run by the same publishers. But the ad rates are way, way lower online, and no paper has yet shown how to create enough of a revenue stream from online ads to fund the operations of the newspaper. I can't see any developments on the horizon that will make online ads pay all that much more than they do now. The Wall Street Journal is making it work, but with a (pricy) subscription. 2) Many online-only news operations don't really do very much, or any, original reporting (Slashdot included, of course). Much of the online news world depends on the basic facts (and many times, analysis) provided by people in the print media. If the Washington Post has to scale down because its circulation dries up, there'll be a lot less info for online sources covering national politics to work with.

Re:What do you expect?

[timeOday]

It's all pulpwood, grown expressly for the purpose of becoming newsprint. It's a farm crop, like corn or beans.

I used to think that, until I saw a TV segment on Canada's Boreal Forest. Based on that, and the information I just found during a quick web search, I'm now leaning towards believing that they are actually cutting down old-growth for disposable paper products:

More than 45% of the Boreal forest has been allocated to logging companies. Close to 650,000 hectares of Boreal forest are logged each year in Canada and the predominant method of cutting this forest is via clearcutting where most, if not all, of the trees are removed. Ninety percent of logging in Canada occurs within primary and old growth forests...

Canada is the largest forest products exporter in the world. This commerce encompasses nearly 20% of the total global value of all forest products, including lumber, chips, paper and paperboard, pulp and raw logs. In Canada s boreal forest, logging occurs primarily on public land in the case of thirteen of the largest companies on logging allocations the size of Switzerland. The United States imports a staggering 80% of all Canadian wood and paper export. Products produced from Boreal forests: Toilet paper, catalogs, book paper, magazines, lumber, newspapers, office paper, paper towels, diapers.

Re:What do you expect?

[bm_luethke]

I live in an area (I live near Clahoun, Tennessee) that creates a large amount of pulpwood for newspapers and is farmed. In fact, I believe the company is the largest producer of newspaper pulp in the US (at least it was a few years back - I don't really neep up with it or anything).

The company is called bowaters and owns several million acres of property. It is some of the best hunting lands in the state for pretty much all our local wildlife (and feral wildlife also). While yes, they clear cut if they aquire new property, and always clear cut when they harvest, the replanting of the trees is about as dense as can be sustained and is GREAT for wildlife - again one of the top hunting areas in the state with both large mature animals taken and a large yearly bag limit (and it's quite expensive to hunt as well).

They allow independant and govt forresters to view thier managment and make suggestions - they even usually follow them also.

I don't know what company you are near, but it is insane to purchase old growth forrest for wood pulp. It takes specific types of trees to make and old growth forrests are not very dense. Pulp manufacturers only purchase them if they need more land, and in many cases what they do with the land is beneficial for the local wildlife in the long term. Basically old growth is horrid for paper pulp - though it is generally good for expensive lumber because of the size of boards that can be harvested.

About the worst that can be said is that the place stinks real bad when you are not used to it and the gasses released, while not damaging, make a fog so thick that you can not see past the end of the hood on your car (literally). When conditions are right it can creep out over the interstate and has caused some of the largest wrecks in US history.

Re:What do you expect?

[Kadin2048]

As other people have said, nature abhors a vacuum. Capitalism does as well. As long as there is a demand for information -- regardless of it's eventual output format -- there will be a place for reporters and journalists.

The problem the print reporters are having are the same that many musical artists are having: the difficulty of separating their particular skill, which there will always be a demand for, from the existing distribution networks, which are becoming obsolete. Just because newspapers go away doesn't mean that there won't be journalists anymore, even professional ones, just that the way they get paid right now isn't going to stay the same.

That's not to say that the transition will be smooth, or that there won't be a whole lot of very painful convulsions in the industry, or that the journalism market of the future will support nearly as many people as it does now. I think it's fair to say in fact that it will not; but one has to distance themselves from the reporters as people and realize that this isn't necessarily bad, it's just a change of how business gets done and how the information gets to the people.

Journalism is, at the end of the day, storytelling. It's just a very niche brand of storytelling where the story that's being told is identical (or as nearly so as can be) to something that actually happened, or produces a perception that it is. That's a skill that transcends media: if the newspaper conglomerates went belly-up tomorrow, people in Des Moines would still want to know what's going on inside the Beltway in D.C., and eventually the market will figure out a way to deliver that information to them. It remains to be seen whether people are interested enough in having their news from a "professional" reporter to pay for it, as opposed to getting it from an amateur blogger or observer for free.

I think some people definitely will want to pay for that stamp of provenance, and will support a small number of professional, trained journalists and reporters. Others will be willing to pay for the service of combing the blogs and other non-professional contributions and aggregating it together in a way that suits their perspectives (and yes, biases). This is what the market demands, this is what the market will get.

The newspapers are dying because they're centered around delivering a service that a substantial portion of the public no longer wants: physical papers. However the public obviously does have a hunger for information. When the papers die and the root source of a lot of that information dries up, I think you will see that a lot of journalists who are now looking at a very bleak future see opportunities open up in unexpected places.

Re:What do you expect?

[Red Alastor]

The problem is that they seem not to want us to read their papers online. Or at least discourage us. Registration ? That's just anonying, let me check if I can find the same information somewhere else. Must pay to look the archives ? What the fuck ?! Bookmarking pages is the modern equivalent to cutting an article you want to keep in your newspaper.

Why don't they make their content easilly accessible with non-obstrusive text-ads ? The money already usually just comes from advertisement anyway (the fee to buy the newspaper in the first place just pay it's production cost).

Re:What do you expect?

[porksoda]

If you collect and organize what Joe Random gets in his mailbox over the course of a year, you'd end up with two piles: one ginormous mound of trash and one teeny pile of solicited correspondence/newspapers/bills.

Which one costs more to get from A to B?
It's still this huge mass of resources (just the paper itself, even) wasted on something that most likely will never be read. Sure, someone gets paid to do it and somehow this affects your (suspiciously) large mail costs, but it just doesn't seem right to me.

Re:What do you expect?

[David Gerard]

The Guardian's online operation is now turning a profit as a separate business, and has about 30% more content than appears in the printed version. (So I was told at a job interview there in August.)

Re:What do you expect?

[madfgurtbn]

The reason is simple, they will not server their customers. They continue to publish crappy articles usually against any decent enterprise and as such lose their readers daily.

It's not so much that the articles are crappy (although they often are), it's that the newspapers publishers do not grok the internets. It's the "horseless carriage" mentality, but now it's "online newspaper". Ask yourself why would a newspaper post one single picture of an event on it's website? The answer: because it's expensive to print pictures on paper.

The television station websites also suffer the same mentality-- let's put up a website that will have exactly the same content that we broadcast on television.

Anyone who spends any amount of time on Slashdot already knows this, but the internet is different than a t.v. or a newspaper. Therefore, it should have a different type of content. On the internet there are no constraints on how long an article or new clip can be, no limit on the number of photos, no reason you can't post raw video or audio along with the typical edited clips so that people who are interested in a subject can see more indepth coverage.

And why don't tv networks have continuous or near-continuous live feeds on their websites from some of the events they cover. I bet >99% of all the video that is fed to the stations or networks is never broadcast. Why not make it available on the web? Most of it will be pointless and boring, but I might tune in occasionally to see long videos of, say, US soldiers working in Iraq or watch raw footage of someone driving around a hurricane damage zone, etc.

Another idea-- post video of all archival broadcasts and footage on the website so people can watch old news if they want.

Re:What do you expect?

[Muppski]

Same here!

A swedish newspaper "aftonbladet" got most of their content online but also some sections that cant be reached without having a membership on the site (which you pay for) and I assume more newspapers got the same.

Just beacuse we see more and more newspaper online dosen't mean newspapers will vanish

Re:What do you expect?

[Professor_UNIX]

And I don't see what clearcutting has to do with it. As long as it's not a eyesore (and you state that it's usually done in remote areas) then it generally makes sense to harvest all of the crop of trees.

He probably watched too much Captain Planet growing up as a kid and fears the fragile jungle eco-system will be destroyed by huge evil environmental-destroying pulp harvestor robots that belch smoke and toxic waste and leave a completely clear-cut barren trail of destruction behind them. I can just envision the poor helpless rainforest creatures fleeing their habitats in terror while looking all wide-eyed and sad with frustration at the evil humans destroying their homes. Man I loved that show.

Re:What do you expect?

[Spacejock]

I don't know about most of their content, or even half or a fraction. You take a 100+ page daily newspaper and turn that into web pages. Then take the next 100+ page daily newspaper and repeat. Do that for a month and you'd have a gigantic web site, whereas most online sites belonging to newpapers seem to have a handful of stories under each category. (Sure, if you strip all the ads from a newspaper you'd get 50 or 60 pages of content, but the websites seem to have just as many ads stuffed into them.)

I'm using Aussie papers like the Sunday Times, West Australian and SMH in this example - the websites are pretty lean but the papers are truly massive. The impression I get is that the vast bulk of printed contact never makes it online, probably due to copyright and the rights they buy from freelancers. For example, there was an article about an SF magazine I'm involved with. It was in the printed edition but never made it online. I enquired about putting a scan on our website and they wanted a payment of over $1000.

Another example: This page is updated weekly to show the book reviews from the SMH. There were 35 reviews in September, only two of which appeared on the website. (According to the article links on that page.)

Re:What do you expect?

[AvitarX]

Suspiciously large mail cost?

I can send a letter anywhere in the country for 32 cents (last I checked).

it seems very in-expensive to me.

Re:What do you expect?

[benzapp]

Simply put - the trees are not on a farm, they're first-growth temperate rainforest trees.

Total bullshit. You find an article describing rainforest trees being used for this purpose. The stuff is expensive and used for expensive furniture and musical instruments, not much else.

Re:What do you expect?

[Mesinjah]

If you think newspapers are bad... at least they have SOME recycled material. Newspaper and other companies are truly doing massive environmental damage right under our noses. (hint) http://www.kleercut.net/en/ http://www.kleercut.net/en/

Re:What do you expect?

[Mesinjah]

Wake up fool! Many companies are fooling you and killing your children's future. http://www.kleercut.net/en/

Re:What do you expect?

[schmelter_tim]

On the internet there are no constraints on how long an article or new clip can be, no limit on the number of photos, no reason you can't post raw video or audio along with the typical edited clips so that people who are interested in a subject can see more indepth coverage.

[Disclaimer: I work for a metro newspaper in the online department, and these opinions are mine, not necessarily reflective of any editorial policies, etc, etc.]

When I first started at the newspaper, I believed exactly as you did--no reason you can't post the entire story, with lots of extra content that couldn't make it into the paper, but there are actually a number of practical limits that make that infeasible:

• Longer stories take more of a reporter's time to craft. As with most organizations, the single biggest expense a newspaper has is payroll
• Even "raw" video, photos, etc. take some resources to process: time & bandwidth being chief among them
• One of the benefits any news organization brings to its readership is editorial decision-making: This is what we think is important today. Yes, it's inherently biased and favors certain types of stories over others. But as has been proven time and again, if information wants to be free, it will be posted, and if people find it important and relevant, that information will be read.

But the single biggest eye-opener for me, and one that cured me of thinking "just post it all!" was our readership numbers. The online features that draw the biggest readership numbers are web-exclusive photo galleries of our local college football team. Top viewed stories every day during football season? Stories relating to that team. Admittedly, I live in Texas, where football is the state religion, but the readers vote with their mice, and the mice are saying "Give us pretty pictures of football, please!"

Newspapers are one part community service and one part business. If the community is obviously overwhelmingly interested in a certain kind of content, then more resources will gravitate toward providing that content.

Re:What do you expect?

[ynohoo]

you can't wipe your ass with a laptop when you run out of paper though.

Re:What do you expect?

[sgtrock]

I checked that side. Total bullshit. Clearcutting is NOT done for newspapers. I also grew up in an area where pulp wood cutting is one of the biggest employers. I know what is needed; a mix of softwood and a little dense hardwood to get the pulp to hold together during the papermaking process. Where I'm from, the local paper company farms poplar (a fast growing, self regenerating deciduous that grows new saplings from a very dense root system) and black spruce (an evergreen with a much slower growth cycle and also requires planting). By far, the tree of choice is poplar. Very little acreage is devoted to spruce. Something like 75% of the land that the paper company owns is devoted to spruce. The rest is all poplar.

If the paper company really needed any "ancient growth" forests, believe me I'd know it. You can't hide logs that big. Instead, EVERYTHING that comes in at the local paper mill is between 16" to 8" in diameter. No first growth stuff.

Kleercut.net is /lying/ to you.

Re:What do you expect?

[massysett]

Does it really matter? Most newspapers offer much (if not all) of their content online. All that matters is ad revenue, and they can even get around the cost of printing and distribution if they publish to the web. I see a transition, not a death.

Yes, it really matters because right now advertisers aren't willing to pay so much to advertise on newspaper websites. (And perhaps why should they? Google's doing a better job.) The New York Times is a good example: their Web readership is higher than their print readership, yet the Web ads generate a small fraction of their total revenues.

Re:What do you expect?

[Daxster]

Temperate rainforest is the stuff found in western Canada/northwest US..I'm not talking about South America here ;)

Re:What do you expect?

[Idealius]

rofl

yea it was a good show. HEART!!!

Re:What do you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

I spent ~10 years working in the newspaper industry, most of it trying to help them move their content online. I left about 5-6 years ago and I won't return. You're right that it's all about revenue - the challenge is that the core of their revenue base is also moving online, and most newspapers are doing an absolutely terrible job keeping it - classified ads account for ~50% of most paper's revenue base (in some papers it's substantially more) and things like ebay, monster.com, craigslist and the like have been whittling away at that revenue base. Prior to the 1950's newspapers drew the largest share of advertising revenue in the US - over the ensuing decades they've lost that share to radio, then tv, then direct mail, and now the internet. They've been in gradual decline for 50 years now, quite literally. Their online strategies have been by and large abysmal failures, with audiences for the big papers like the Boston Globe, NY Times, Washington Post and so on drawing most of the visitors while the smaller market papers are generally working with very low access and money losing business models. Some are doing ok with local ad banner sales and even online classified stuff, but generally they're losing money at it.

I actually spent several years trying to convince them that audience participation, building a sense of community, and citizen journalism were the way to try and work against these trends (it's very expensive to cover every local jr. high football game - it's relatively inexpensive to build tools to let the local coaches submit the scores for them, and this is the content the local newspapers still had a shot at 'owning'). Some are doing ok with this kind of strategy, but most journalists are appalled to even consider taking direct feedback on their articles (discussion boards tied to stories) and turn their noses up at the idea of citizen journalism (or at least that was my experience, 3 dailies and a couple of weekly papers in the publishing company I was working for).

I left in frustration. I still think they're doomed. Not in the sense of 'they're all going out of business in the next few years,' but in the sense of a continuation of the gradual decline in revenues, which leads to a decline in the quality of the editorial product and a decline in relevance. Note that I'm talking about the majority of local community papers here, the story is somewhat different for the huge metro area dailies like the Times.

Re:What do you expect?

[harks]

I would expect ad rates to be proportional to viewership. As people transfer further from newspapers to online news, ad value will also transfer from newspapers to online news sources.

Re:What do you expect?

[cheezfreek]

you can't wipe your ass with a laptop when you run out of paper though

Well, you can, but I wouldn't want to clean the ports or fan grill afterwards.

Re:What do you expect?

[Crispy Critters]

"the replanting of the trees is about as dense as can be sustained and is GREAT for wildlife"

I am going to have to be skeptical of this statement.

In general, large tracts of land densely planted with a single species of tree with all trees of a similar age do not provide good habitat for wildlife. The crowded trees block out the light that would allow understory plants to grow, the plants that provide most of the food and cover for animals. Almost all animals require many different kinds of plants. Usually, the boundary between forest and fields provides the best habitat for animals.

The fact that a lot of deer are shot there does not prove that it is good habitat. Most of the east coast is overcrowded with deer, so they are pushed into marginal habitats. An open forest with no understory plants is also an easy place to see animals from a large distance, making them particularly vulnerable there.

I cannot say that any of this applies specifically to paper mill lands in TE, because I have never been there. But my general knowledge makes me skeptical of your claims.

Re:What do you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to agree. We are finding out that segmentation of forests by roads and fields can hurt wildlife. So can plots of monoculture pine. And lets not even talk about the chlorine based chemestry and the release PCB's in the water. Oh and how about those chemical fogs that cause accidents on I-75? Bring on the e-paper.

Re:What do you expect?

[madfgurtbn]

Thanks for your insider's viewpoint. I think you made my case for me, though, here:

The online features that draw the biggest readership numbers are web-exclusive photo galleries of our local college football team.

This is exactly the point of my post--the newspaper cannot print dozens of high resolution color photos of the game in the dead tree version of the paper, but for next-to-zero costs, they can post them all on the website and that's what's drawing reader attention.

Newspapers and tv stations who have websites must begin to think of their websites differetnly than they think of their other business. Newpapers must become more like tv stations, for one. They are going to have to have constantly updated news stories and richer content if they are going to compete online.

Re:What do you expect?

[esobofh]

I think your confusing "rain forest trees" with "brazilian rain forest trees" - the west coast including oregan, washington, bc & alaska is all rain forest - and yes, a large portion of what's harvested from it is used for pulp/paper. The remainder is largely construction/timber.

Re:What do you expect?

[bm_luethke]

"In general, large tracts of land densely planted with a single species of tree with all trees of a similar age do not provide good habitat for wildlife. The crowded trees block out the light that would allow understory plants to grow, the plants that provide most of the food and cover for animals. Almost all animals require many different kinds of plants. Usually, the boundary between forest and fields provides the best habitat for animals."

I've read that in many places also, however when I try and hunt bowaters it never seems to be that way. It's usually so dense with plants, vines, honeysuckle, etc that I don't really see how the deer go through it (I can't and have lost deer because of it). Usually one hunts the roads because you can't see anywhere else.

Several of the local wildlife management areas are done in the same format as bowaters. Though, by far, the best deer come from grain farms but those are hard to grow in East Tennessee (ever hear the Rocky Top theme?), but that doesn't count squirrils, rabbits, birds, etc.

As for the best regions for wildlife, I think it would more depend on the type of wildlife - I doubt desert animals would thrive there. I am also sure that bowaters remove the best habitat for some, and is better for others. Forrests and fields would also be the same - good for some bad for others. Not to mention that field/woods boundary (at least around here) is mostly manmade. Go to areas that have almost never seen man and it's all big woods that have killed off nearly all the underbrush.

"The fact that a lot of deer are shot there does not prove that it is good habitat. Most of the east coast is overcrowded with deer, so they are pushed into marginal habitats. An open forest with no understory plants is also an easy place to see animals from a large distance, making them particularly vulnerable there."

Ok, I'll amend what I said - many are killed (and on average larger) than all other areas nearby. In fact, much larger and many more - and that includes places like our lease that are somewhat older growth (I suppose as old as you can find in this region - some VERY large oaks that we tend for thier acorns - what we refer to as "Big Woods"). The deer are pushed into us, which can easily be seen in years where they are not so overcrowded - almost none killed outside of bowaters. Though that has changed somewhat with a few of the larger tracts of land changing management styles. For instance, we run several medium sized food plots year round and several of our neighbors do also.

"I cannot say that any of this applies specifically to paper mill lands in TE, because I have never been there. But my general knowledge makes me skeptical of your claims."

*shrug* you can either believe me or not. I do not know other areas, I only know the ones I go in (and I know them from my ability to take game animals and thier relative health). I don't know what the textbooks say is good/bad for the animals or if what I see is universal (I would assume it's not universal - I would guess regions differ quite a bit) - but I can very well look at where ours are dense and am perfectly capable of noticing that ours are much smaller than the others. And I can also notice that the wildlife management service creates an environment very similar to the ones I see at bowaters.

Re:What do you expect?

[schmelter_tim]

This is exactly the point of my post--the newspaper cannot print dozens of high resolution color photos of the game in the dead tree version of the paper, but for next-to-zero costs, they can post them all on the website and that's what's drawing reader attention.

Newspapers and tv stations who have websites must begin to think of their websites differetnly than they think of their other business. Newpapers must become more like tv stations, for one. They are going to have to have constantly updated news stories and richer content if they are going to compete online.

Thanks for continuing this. To take it a bit further, though, my intent in pointing out the popularity of the football gallery was to highlight the fact that scarce resources will follow the readership to a greater or lesser extent, and that migration of resources has consequences for what you're proposing.

You say "[Newspapers] are going to have to have constantly updated news stories and richer content if they are going to compete online." Fair enough, but the two points I was (poorly) attempting to illustrate are 1) if newsroom resources are going toward football photo galleries, they can't be used to post minute of city council meetings, reporters notes, full text of interviews, and other compelling content that can't fit in print; and 2) it's doubtful that a significant percentage of readers even want that level of complexity for most stories. Hence the popularity of easy-to-digest photo galleries: quick to consume, visually- stimulating, exclusive content that people can enjoy on their way to the football message boards.

I may be misunderstanding the thrust of your argument, though--if you're suggesting that it's photos that are going to draw attention, then you'll get no argument from me. Some of my colleagues in the newsroom often joke that we should simply abandon the whole "news" thing in favor of photo galleries and college sports. That's fine if all we wish to do is serve readers exactly what they want, but I think a lot of editors are of the opinion that a very real part of the newspaper's job is to provide news that, in the opinion of the editorial board, the audience needs to know.

One thing is for sure: newspapers, both individually and as an industry, feel the pressure, and are scrambling to come up with models that allow them to survive. Case in point, a colleague attended a conference last week where one of the panels was titled, "News 2010: Who will lead the way as newspapers die?"

This at a convention heavily attended by newspaper online editors.

Re:What do you expect?

[Crispy Critters]

Thank you for your very interesting reply. The fact that the understory is dense in these planted forests makes it sound like they are doing something to enhance the habitat, and not just growing as many trees as possible. That is great to hear.

Re:What do you expect?

[madfgurtbn]

Well, I think we're sort of arguing two different things here, although we're mostly in agreement. The thing that concerns you that doesnt' concern me too much is the sports vs. hard news thing.

Although I couldn't care less about the sports, I know that lots of people read the paper only for the sports (young males especially). That will not change with online news sources. The difference is that now you know exactly how many people read each article .

I wish I could wave a magic wand which would make people pay attention less to sports and more to things that make a difference in our world, but that ain't gonna happen. You can lament the vapidity of our culture, but a business cannot ignore it. If people want pictures of football games, and you already have a photographer there taking photos, then post 'em.

I think the same thing will work with hard news, though. This is where you and I differ. I say that online news should be different than the printed news. In addition to re-printing the exact text of what appears in the paper version, it must be immediate, with rich content, including video or audio, many photos, unedited transcripts, additional text, historical context and links to related items, etc. And I know this is not likely to happen, but it should include reader comments. Most of value of slashdot comes from the readers comments, not from the posted articles. At slashdot I can count on someone in the audience having more expertise than the author of the article. Big news outfits are afraid of the readers because of all the trolling and inanity, but they are losing many of their potentioal page views to the people who are not afraid to deal with it. THe big guys write the article and then some blog links to it, which drives traffic to the article, which is nice, but then all the subsequent commenting traffic goes to the blog.

Obviously, blogs would continue to get a lot of the coment traffic even if the news sites did enable comments, but the fact that new sites don't enable comments is just another example of 'horseless carriage' thinking. The old media decide what is important enough for us to read, which was historically necessary because of space limitations in the paper or time limitations on the air. Then, if any reader input is printed it is only after being vetted by the same people who decided what was important to print in the first place.

On the internet that paradigm is quaint and obsolete. Your management must begin to grasp that now or they will be out of business sooner than they realize. If they think that their business is printing paper news, then they are doomed. If they think their business is to provide the best possible news, sports and information that the technology allows, then they have a chance.

The surest way for a business to fail at a new technology is to try to conform the new technology to their old way of doing business. I'm glad to hear your bosses are attending seminars that asssume the printed newspaper is dead. The sooner they get over their mourning period, the sooner they can begin to deal with the new reality. I wish them luck, but I am not optimistic they will grok the new paradigm. Instead, at every turn, when someone says "we should enable comments", or "we should give the photographers video cameras", everyone will think of reasons NOT to do it, rather than think about HOW to do it successfully. I would bet my house on that.

The real question is...

[Enzo the Baker]

does this result in people being more or less informed? Or are people fooling themselves if they believe that they are well informed by either source?

Re:The real question is...

[CyricZ]

I'd say people end up being far more informed. Major newspapers will never present worthwhile news, because it is too costly for them. They most likely will not report on the misdeeds of major advertisers. Likewise, in America especially, if they question the administration they'll immediately lose their press access. Thus all they can do is put out bullshit, and hope that people continue to buy their papers. But it looks like people are catching on, and thus people aren't buying their papers.

Then again, many news websites are not as tied up. They can offer viewpoints that the major papers could never think of presenting. Even if their news is incorrect, it still may provoke thought in its readers, perhaps enough for them to investigate other news sources, and hence to make up their own mind based on the information they can obtain.

Re:The real question is...

[letchhausen]

On the one hand I think that the idea that bad information can have good results is pretty rose-tinted to say the least. On the other hand the internet has consolidated access to alternative media which is a good thing and can lead to a more informed populace. Of course the internet is full of the same slanted and opinionated crap that you see everywhere else so it can lead to an utterly mis-informed populace. And your statements about the mainstream media are pretty spot on, of course since I would tend to read those online I don't really see a difference there in medium. Same lies different venue. In the end one can get the inside scoop from either Rush Limbaugh's blog or Al Franken's depending on the already formed predilections. Or better yet, CowboyNeal's.......

Re:The real question is...

[Mad Hughagi]

At the end of the day everything is only a collective hunch, and if you are trusting an editor to determine what you will read I don't think you will be less aware of the major issues.

Informed by which metric? Shouldn't the government radio address be all I need?
Newspapers only print a particular set of wires, and they primarily exist to make advertising money. This is not concordant with my interests, so for me they are less informative.

I had an inane Toronto Star telemarketer yell at me once. I told her I only read online, she claims I'm half-informed and asks me if I'm proud of being ignorant. She must have been psychic.

Re:The real question is...

[Bonobo_Unknown]

People will stop using traditional media sources such as newspapers and televistion, and little by little people will use custom news services like /. The problem here as I see it is that there will be a lot of people that won't get a big picture view of the world. /. is pretty good in the content that it provides but other sources will become even more focused on the highly specialised and inane. Welcome to the fragmented future, where you can choose the reality you wish to live in order to fit into your personal beleif structures... The problem with this is that people will never really be chalanged to think outside the box they create for themselves. I see this as a danger to society, and free thought. you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it think.

Re:The real question is...

[Rayonic]

Likewise, in America especially, if they question the administration they'll immediately lose their press access.

The New York Times and the Washington Post have lost their press access?

Or did you mean that both papers have never been critical of the current administration?

Re:The real question is...

[NanoGator]

"does this result in people being more or less informed? Or are people fooling themselves if they believe that they are well informed by either source?"

That depends... are we talking about Slashdotters here?

Re:The real question is...

[Anonymous Coward]

parent is a troll, please mod down

Re:The real question is...

[SnarfQuest]

They most likely will not report on the misdeeds of major advertisers. Likewise, in America especially, if they question the administration they'll immediately lose their press access.

Quick, replace your tin foil hat! The foil taped over the window is coming loose! The spy satellites are going for your rectal implants!

Re:The real question is...

[Technician]

On the other hand the internet has consolidated access to alternative media which is a good thing and can lead to a more informed populace. Of course the internet is full of the same slanted and opinionated crap that you see everywhere else so it can lead to an utterly mis-informed populace.

This consolidation means I can drill down to more detail and opinions than are in a print version which has to be limited simply by the size of the edition. I just voted by mail. You get paid opinion placement in the voter pamphlet and the liberal view in the print edition of the newspaper. Online I can go beyond the paid opinions and find a discussion of the issues and weigh the validity of the points myself. The glossy overview tends to gloss right over the real issues. The discussions pick it apart exposing the gritty detals and their impact.

It's like hitting Amazon and seeing the latest review of the DRM'ed Sony BMG release. The review is of the band and the fact the DRM permits 3 copies to be made.

Hit slashdot and you get into the gritty stuff of the rootkit and hidden drivers and application with no remove option and the impact to processor performance.

It's the Slashdot discussion I value. My local newspaper won't make an issue on the Sony BMG DRM until the online community makes it an issue.

Re:The real question is...

[ClamIAm]

Why this is modded "funny" i dunno. Think about this for a second, though. If the NYT or Wash. Post were barred from White House press conferences, millions of people would hear about it. If J. Random Reporter has his press pass revoked, the big papers don't care (less competition?).

Re:The real question is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come on for along time there circa 2001 - 2002 no one said a thing against them. It's only within the last couple of years that your press has grown some and started to question anything.

Re:The real question is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe because NYT and Wash. Post are considered to be tools of the CIA?

Re:The real question is...

[Anonymous Coward]

True enough ... neither have lost any access to the normal press briefings ... as noted, that would be a little extreme.

They solved this in a more acceptable way ... by planting shills amongst the 'reporters', then calling on those shills to ask their questions. That way, everybody gets to 'participate' in the briefing, but only known-friendlies are called on to ask questions ...

Not that this type of behavior is confined to any particular political stripe ...

Immediate Access

[dduardo]

Why would I pay for yesterday's news? The internet and televsion are giving me immediate access to news which makes newspapers somewhat obsolete.

Re:Immediate Access

[halowolf]

It's why I don't buy magazines anymore. I find that they just cannot stay relevant because internet sources of the same information are immediately available. I might browse the odd one if i'm bored but that is about it.

Re:Immediate Access

[gardyloo]

Why would I pay for yesterday's news?

      Yeah! And on some special websites, you can read the same news several days in a row! Sometimes after months!

Re:Immediate Access

[lukewarmfusion]

Still, I do enjoy sitting on the back porch in the morning with a newspaper in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. The Internet is way too heavy to read on the back porch.

Re:Immediate Access

[Jason1729]

My wireless notebook weighs less than a typical newspaper does these days.

Re:Immediate Access

[CSfreakazoid]

*cough*/.*cough*

Re:Immediate Access

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I think there needs to be some work on formatting and ads.
The formatting of news web sites seem to leave a lot to be desired. For one, look at CNN.com, for any given page, the actual article is less than 1/4th of the page, the rest is split between an asinine site navigation system and ads.

Ads in a newspaper aren't anywhere nearly as intrusive as on the Internet. No newspaper ad bounces, flash, shake, spin, spawns popups or any crap like that. Newspaper ads don't try to leave cookies, tracks IP or otherwise grab and store information without telling me. I block all that stuff, but it's still a surprise when I use other computers.

Re:Immediate Access

[CheshireCatCO]

Depth and medium.

Television is no substitute for a newspaper, at least not if the newpapers were doing their jobs correctly. TV news simply doesn't get you the depth that you get in a newspaper. Part of that is due to the nature of the medium and part of it is because the people producing news programs are more interested in flash than in content. (Yes, I know it's because that's what sells. Consumers are generally dumb and the TV folks are happy to go that route rather to trying to be decent journalists.)

The internet is a good substitute, provided you are smart enough to read reputable sources. (In other words, the same basic people as the ones who print newspapers, only putting the text online instead.) But that doesn't seem to be the draw away from the printed papers. Also, I (and many others) would much rather read a physical piece of paper than a computer screen. I work at a computer 9+ hours a day, typically, but I hate reading significant stretches of text off that screen. I prefer something solid. I can't really articulate why, but I just can't manage the computer screen well.

Re:Immediate Access

[Kafka_Canada]

Uh, did you steal that post from 1995?

Re:Immediate Access

[BioCS.Nerd]

You're not just paying for the news, you're paying for journalism: investigation, analysis, and leg work. These are the things that make news worth while. Mind you, this happens with reducing frequency, but it's a nice idea.

Re:Immediate Access

[sootman]

I pay $40/year for my local Sunday paper, mostly for the ads. I buy enough gadgets through the year that the paper pays for itself a few times over. (I buy things when the price is good, and the occasional great sale means I can get a hard drive or whatever for less than I could online. Plus: no shipping, easier returns, see it in person before I buy it, get it the same day, etc etc etc.)

That said, I always end up finding a few things to read and usually wind up spending a couple hours with it. It's quiet and calm and a nice change not to be sitting up looking at a screen for another couple hours. Sure, it may not be great for up-to-the-second news, but I don't care about that anyway. There's always some neat articles about local stuff, vacations, homes, etc. Browsing slashdot and the rest gets old after a while and it's a nice change of pace to find some unexpected neat thing that *doesn't* have to do with technology, Google, MS, Apple, or My Rights Online--and to do it in a nice, quiet, analog fashion.

Oh yeah, one other great thing about newspapers: no animated ads. :-)

Re:Immediate Access

[thatnerdguy]

I still read the newspaper daily, mostly for free at cafes etc, sometimes I buy it. I read it because it's relevant to me for the local stories (and I do live in a major city) and for the comics. All my favorite comics on one convenient page. Also love the crosswords.

Re:Immediate Access

[mblase]

Why would I pay for yesterday's news? The internet and televsion are giving me immediate access to news which makes newspapers somewhat obsolete.

The television does not. The internet does, but you have to be at a computer with Internet access to get it. What about those times during the day when you're not?

In my experience, newspapers are still ideal for getting the local news while you're eating breakfast, riding the bus, or sitting in the breakroom. Plus they don't use up your batteries.

Re:Immediate Access

[nharmon]

Newspapers are okay, but magazines are horrible for splitting stories up with advertisements.

Re:Immediate Access

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

A nice idea yes, but when even the Grey Lady herself is fraught with Charlatains an Liars, what claim does print media have on Journalistic integrity?

It's a nice idea, and one that isn't particular to print. And certainly not guaranteed by virtue of print.

Re:Immediate Access

[ben_kelley]

Oh yeah, one other great thing about newspapers: no animated ads. :-)

Well not yet anyway, but they're working on it.

Re:Immediate Access

[jejones]

I have taken to just buying the Sunday paper, too...but for that matter, CompUSA/Office {Depot, Max}/Staples/Best Buy all have their Sunday inserts online, comics are online, and the newspaper itself has most of its homegrown content online for seven days...so aside from classified ads (isn't that what craigslist is for?) what's the point in buying a dead tree newspaper?

Re:Immediate Access

[akeyes]

And that's why he doesn't pay for /.

Re:Immediate Access

[akeyes]

Oh yeah, one other great thing about newspapers: no animated ads. :-)

What's an ad?

This comment brought to you by the Adblock extension.

Re:Immediate Access

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather have well-written, coherent, reliable news a day late than the trash that gets printed by sites like CNN.com.

Re:Immediate Access

[Viper233]

I could swear this comment is a dupe...

Re:Immediate Access

[Belseth]

Yeah! And on some special websites, you can read the same news several days in a row! Sometimes after months!

Yeah and in the film industry we'd call it reimaging the same news. Recycling the same ole shit just doesn't have the same ring.

Re:Immediate Access

[CalcMan]

What about those times during the day when you're not?

Times when you don't have access to the internet?!??!? what kind of a nerd are you.

Re:Immediate Access

[honkycat]

I'm with you about the tangible, solid nature of the paper. For me, it's nice to take a break from the screen and sit on the couch and just browse through the paper. I find it a lot easier to scan headlines that way than by paging down a screen. I think I'm just trained to block out junk on a web page that doesn't interest me, whereas with something in print I tend to actually parse it and retain it, even if it's not something immediately of interest.

On topics that I'm not deeply interested in, it's a lot more common for me to hear someone talk about something and say, "Hey, I remember reading about that in the paper a few days ago," than it is to remember something from a web site.

Plus, crossword puzzles are much better on newsprint than any other medium. Comics, too.

Finally, I can sit down with my fiancee and share pieces of a newspaper and feel closer to her. When we sit in the study, each with our own computer and browser, there's not the same connection. With the paper, we both have the same source and read the same things to a greater degree than with the internet.

Plus, there's very little in the world that I need to know about the instant it happens. For 99.99% of the news, I'm perfectly happy letting it percolate through the system for a day before I read about it.

Re:Immediate Access

[the-build-chicken]

have you tried gzip-ing it?

Re:Immediate Access

[idlake]

Well, you're already blocking ads, but there are additional extensions that let you change formatting permanently for a particular site. One of the simpler ones are little add-ons for GreaseMonkey that automatically show you the print version of any article, where available.

Re:Immediate Access

[peterpi]

Why would I pay for yesterday's news? heheh, I wish you had a little subscriber star by your username ;)

Re:Immediate Access

[Gothic_Walrus]

Insightful?

Someone didn't get the joke here...

Re:Immediate Access

[Nept]

you might read your newspaper, but do you read your shakespeare?

Re:Immediate Access

[Anonymous Coward]

"No newspaper ad bounces, flash, shake, spin, spawns popups or any crap like that. Newspaper ads don't try to leave cookies, tracks IP or otherwise grab and store information without telling me."

Bullshit, our local paper has a little ad section that you have to tear off to get to the funnies (the only part of the paper i read anymore) == popup ad

Then while your paging through the paper all these ads fall out on the floor. Theyre cut to a smaller size & printed on glossy paper specifically so theyll slide out of the paper into your lap. == cookies

& dont get me started on newspapers selling subscriber info to advertisers, that was the original reason i cancelled my subscription all those years ago.

Newspaper ads do all the same shit that internet ads do, they just go about it differently, & are harder to block. If the newspapers are dying, i say good riddance.

Re:Immediate Access

[substance2003]

My source for reputable news on the internet is from a television's website.
Canada's french CBC website www.radio-canada.ca is a jewel for this and I'll take their article's over most other web sites.
Very professional, lists link to article's sources. Gives access to clips of the reports and so much more. It's way better than the english CBC's website.

As for english news. I tend to read off of the BBC's website. Mainly because it's RSS links are on my firefox by default.

Re:Immediate Access

[hobo sapiens]

Studies have actually proven that reading comprehension increases significantly when reading a hard copy as opposed to the screen, and here is one of them.

Add to the fact that reading the computer screen doesn't tend to facilitate discussion with others around you. My wife and I read the paper and talk about it. That doesn't happen so much when I read the news online. But then again, doing just about anything online is so much more insular than the "real life" equivalent.

I will say this, though, the newspapers are desparate. The city I live in is remarkably a one paper town. Even with that, the other day in the grocery store a sales rep from the paper was pitching his wares like he was a crack addict. "Please please please buy my paper! I need this! You've gotta help me out here! What will it take to get you to subscribe? Well, then, can you lend me $5?" Sheesh! This would seem to indicate, anecdotally, that newspapers are hurting. Which is a shame, because at least with newspapers you are usually dealing with respected sources.

Re:Immediate Access

[CheshireCatCO]

Actually, I use the BBC website a lot, myself. Also, NPR's site. There are certainly television news stations that do their jobs, but I think we can agree that they're the exception rather than the rule.

Re:Immediate Access

[srmalloy]

Yeah! And on some special websites, you can read the same news several days in a row! Sometimes after months!

And some headlines can not only be recycled, but are redundant; how many times can you print "Politician opens mouth, lies" before people stop paying attention to the tautology?

I still pay for the paper.

[rtphokie]

Yet I read a lot more of them. I dont think I'm in the minority either. The local paper is the only way I get local news anymore. The local TV news is so inane I cant take it.

Re:I still pay for the paper.

[Fyre2012]

agreed

also, i find that with most suburban / rural areas, local news just isn't available online.
and with the larger cities, it's only the front page stuff that really makes it on the net, not the really good stuff (like garage sales!)

Sure it's the Interenet?

[Cheapy]

Maybe it's simply apathy for the news? I'm constantly amazed at how clueless people are towards the current events of the day. If the internet is to blame, surely SOME people would know of events going on?

Re:Sure it's the Interenet?

[devnull_2]

Maybe the biased & sensationalistic news organizations cause peoples apathy toward them. I'm sure rampant product placement within news stories isn't far off..

Re:Sure it's the Interenet?

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you mean? The other day while drinking a refreshing can of Coca-Cola, I was thinking: Wouldn't it be fun to read the newspaper under my new PureLight(tm) light fixture? So then I got on my new Dell computer (preloaded with Windows XP AND a nice nVidia card) and to check out if anyone else had the same idea as me!

Re:Sure it's the Interenet?

[Skim123]

Case in point, perhaps?

Re:Sure it's the Interenet?

[diablomonic]

in my case, I have a hard time watching/reading any political news, due to it PISSING ME OFF with all the BULLSHIT that occurs all the time, with nothing much I can do about it. Even though I still read/watch it every now and the, my point is that im not so much apathetic as frustrated with many world events, it stresses me out too much worrying about it, so i tend to avoid it. Even so, since im basically a net addict, I still know a lot more of whats going on than most other people I know (and definately more than anyone I know in the tech trend area).

And in other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

The refridgerator has reportedly killed off the milkman.

Stay tuned

Making Excuses

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh please, the Internet has been commercialized and affordable for a decade. The newspapers are killing themselves. The depth of the reporting is horrid. Not that the majority of continuous cycle news channels and websites are much better, but they're more immediate and therefore, accessible.

Re:Making Excuses

[wealthychef]

Ah, but it's still relevantly recently that Joe Sixpack actually feels comfortable using the internet. But yes, now the newspapers are going to be put under pressure to actually deliver the depth of reporting and excellence that they claim the Internet lacks and they are able to deliver, due to the professionalism and ethics of their reporters (cough). This is All Good, Baby.

Re:Making Excuses

[pete6677]

Newspapers have been fat and happy for a long time. Most towns have 1 or 2 main papers which have never had a shortage of business. The money rolled in as long as they kept cranking out a paper each day; it didn't much matter what they put in it. Now that people have more options, they expect more. Not everybody needs a daily paper subscription to be informed about the news. In fact, as other posters have mentioned, printed news is stale by the time you read it.

Any paper who wants to survive in the future needs to invest heavily in online content and NOT just make their website exactly like the printed paper. If news is presented online in a convenient format, they will have no shortage of page views and ad revenue. Otherwise they will shrivel up and die. I suspect most papers will survive but those that are stubbornly resistant to progress will die in the next 10 years or so.

Re:Making Excuses

[innocent_white_lamb]

NOT just make their website exactly like the printed paper.
 
A friend of mine has a small paper that he sells online subscriptions to as well as having it on newsstands.
 
I put it online a couple of years ago. It was exactly the same as the printed version -- just a PNG of each page that you could flip through.
 
A few months ago I redesigned it for him so it's a nice clicky-clicky headline thing - go directly to the section you want by category and so on; much more native Internet-ish than printed-paper-on-the-screen. And online subscription revenue has now gone through the roof, compared to what it was before.

Who cares?

[bleckywelcky]

The only people who read newspapers regularly are those who have made a habit out of it their entire life. I still catch the paper once in a while if it looks like they might have an interesting article. But for all your current news, the newspaper is a day late and $0.50 too expensive. Why pay for info that I can get from my computer for free? Unless it is very locally specific news.

Re:Who cares?

[jangobongo]

I live in the Phoenix area which is served by the Arizona Republic. Their excellent online version carries all the same stories that the print one does.

I just set my Yahoo RSS reader to list their news, business, community, and offbeat sections and it gives me the top ten stories for each main section of the paper (at least, the ones that I'm interested in). I can scan the headlines and brief intro to see if I would like to read more in depth and I find much more relevant local news that way. I never waste my time on television news unless there is some national breaking news story being covered by the news channels.

If there is breaking local news, the RSS is updated, and I usually read about it long before it makes it to the print version. We get the paper every day, but it's a complete waste for me because I get much more news from the online version.

Re:Who cares?

[ShieldW0lf]

Why pay for info that I can get from my computer for free?

Simple. Because you can read it while you're waiting for or sitting on the bus. I wouldn't be suprised to discover public transit to be the number one motivation behind newspaper sales.

Re:Who cares?

[pomo monster]

Well, for one thing, if you're trapped in a crush of strangers on a downtown train 8 a.m. Monday morning, you'll have an easier time burying your head in A.M. New York than trying to fold your WiFi-equipped laptop over your face. And plenty of people just plain hate reading text onscreen, what with the terrible resolution and contrast inferior even to newsprint. There's always the convenience and superior presentation that makes print an attractive choice.

That said, as internet delivery matures, it'll no longer make sense to keep printing classifieds, job/real estate listings, and things of that nature. These are all are better served online. Detailed news coverage, too, will move off the printed page. You'll pick up a print edition for the morning commute with summaries of the day's news and events, and after you arrive at work, you'll go online to check out the full story, context, related articles, and updates.

With that in mind, I predict that papers with an urban readership (NY Times, London Times, Mainichi Shimbun) will begin offering tabloid-format editions--magazine-style folding, that is, as opposed to broadsheet--simply because it's more convenient for the commute. These will shift to summary/teaser form, as nobody's going to be reading them for anything more than to pass the time and to find out what they have to look forward to online. It's easy enough to find up-to-the-minute headlines and detailed reports in a city environment, anyways (web, outdoor news tickers, taxicab LCDs).

God knows I'd appreciate a tabloid edition of the Times. Stick the crossword on the back page and I'm set for the commute home too.

Re:Who cares?

[Darius Jedburgh]

Pah! Haven't these people heard they can download the news to their PDAs. 1 year of the NY Times would probably pay for a suitable PDA.

Re:Who cares?

[assassinator42]

I read the paper sometimes. Mainly just the front page stories and the public opinion section though. I get it for free, though. I don't like having to turn pages and fold the paper though. Well, mainly I don't like having to turn to a different page to finnish a story I'm reading.

Re:Who cares?

[falzer]

I read the paper more now than I ever used to. Everyone knows my name at the local sandwich & soup restaurant. The owner makes my regular as soon as he sees me around the corner, and I have a crisp local newspaper ready at my seat.

Does that not just warm the cockles of your heart? Who wouldn't want to read a newspaper after hearing this story?

If newspapers go away, I'll have to bring in the backs of cereal boxes so I have something to read.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, they have. That's why services like Avant Go exist.

Re:Who cares?

[hotdiggitydawg]

...except in the UK, where "Metro" is available for free on many form of public transport in the bigger cities. Why buy a paper when you can get one for free - especially when there's already one waiting on the bus, so you don't have to find a newsstand?

Re:Who cares?

[bleckywelcky]

Except it's subsidized by your taxes - so you're already paying for it. Nothing in this world is "free".

Re:Who cares?

[James McGuigan]

The Metro is not subsidized by taxes nor run by the government. They give the paper away for free (they leave a huge stack of them just before the ticket barriers in the tube). They don't pay for anyone to stand around giving them out, and get a high readership because all people have to do is grab a copy. They get their money through selling advertizing space in the paper. The higher the readership the more valuable this space becomes.

Re:Who cares?

[bleckywelcky]

Ah sorry, I was assuming that like so many other things in Socialist England that it was subsidized by the government. Instead, you are bombarded with advertisements up the wazoo, kind of like those free real estate magazines at the local chamber of commerce. I guess whether something is "free" or "useless" is all in the eye of the beholder.

Newspaper is killing the newspaper.

[CyricZ]

Truly, it is the newspapers who are killing themselves. Why is that? Because the quality of the reporting has dropped off substantially.

Take the New York Times. Between that Blair guy and now Miller, they've been shown to be nothing but a hack paper. Any newspaper that did not immediately point out the numerous lies of so many British and American politicians with regards to the ongoing war in Iraq falls into the same boat.

Intelligent people aren't going to pay money for ads and bullshit stories. And it's intelligent people who tend to read newspapers.

Re:Newspaper is killing the newspaper.

[Anonymous Coward]

Intelligent people aren't going to pay money for ads and bullshit stories. And it's intelligent people who tend to read newspapers.

Really? A typical story is probably written at a reading level to accomodate a 10 year old. The intelligent people forego the shallow drivel of the syndicated press and get the information as close to the source as possible. Which would you rather read, the science and tech section of your local rag, or the links directly to the trade publications and institutions that you find in a /. posting?

Re:Newspaper is killing the newspaper.

[stubear]

"Intelligent people aren't going to pay money for ads and bullshit stories. And it's intelligent people who tend to read newspapers."

Wow, another /. stereotype that's wrong, go figure. Either you have a different definition of intelligent or you simply don't know that newspapers are by and large written for a 5th-6th grade reading and comperhension level.

Re:Newspaper is killing the newspaper.

[shanen]

Hear, hear, and a insightful mod to that post.

However, the lousy quality of the reporting isn't the only thing that's killing the newspapers. I think that they are in a death trap of reader selectivity. Since most people only believe what they want to believe, do you really expect them to pay to read other stuff, too? From that perspective, it's only natural for the Internet to slaughter the newspapers. Not just because the Web is faster and cheaper, but because search engines make it easy to find the stuff that agrees with what you want to believe. No cognitive dissonance there!

To give you a convenient concrete example, if you dislike Bush, just do a news search for "Dubya", and you're pretty sure to see plenty of disrespect. All you need is to learn the appropriate buzzwords for what you want to see, and voila, that's what you see.

Actually, I like to sample several of the extreme positions, because the truth is most often somewhere in the middle. However, that's another strike against newspapers, in my opinion, since most of them are pretty uniform. An enormous part of the content comes straight off the wire, and the rest of it tends to be whatever the publisher likes.

Re:Newspaper is killing the newspaper.

[CyricZ]

Most people don't have the time nor the resources to subscribe to multiple scientific/specialty journals, nor do they have time to attend parliament on a daily basis, or even to read the parliamentary transcripts.

That said, that's no excuse for newspapers to report blatantly false information. Going back to the example of the Iraqi invasion, every newspaper of any credibility should have torn Powell's UN presentation to pieces. It has nothing to do with politics. It just has to do with the fact that they're there to report fact, and thus the correct thing for them to do when presented with lies is to point out those lies for what they are.

Re:Newspaper is killing the newspaper.

[CyricZ]

It's widely known that they're written at that level. But you have to consider who reads them. You rarely see children reading newspapers. You probably won't see a McDonald's employee reading a paper, nor will you see a construction worker or a clothing salesperson. You see business executives, university-level students, researchers and other people with a higher level of intelligence reading such material, even if it is written at a sixth grade level.

Re:Newspaper is killing the newspaper.

[pomo monster]

So where do you get your news, Indymedia? Please.

If it's a balanced and comprehensive understanding of current issues you want, it's a mistake to rely on any one source of news, any one perspective--if only because people will attack you for your choice. For the record, I'll spend my time flipping between the NY Times, the Economist, Salon, the Village Voice, the NY Observer, NewsMax, CNN, and Fox News, and I find that's a salad that works for me. But no matter what you're reading, approach your sources critically and you'll probably do much better at understanding what's important to you.

Re:Newspaper is killing the newspaper.

[heinousjay]

I get all my news from a mix of Slashdot, Fark, and a selection of blogs written by 19 year old college coeds. Can't say I'm all that well informed, exactly, but the webcams keep me happy.

Re:Newspaper is killing the newspaper.

[TheStonepedo]

The internet can be used to seek reliable, unbiased information. Nearly every newspaper in the US covers both liberal and conservative issues, yet its publishers send their checks to the same party year after year when campaign time rolls around. Most US news sources put a spin on current events to write stories and make a few more dollars. I read BBC news online because its news seems straightforward and mostly unbiased. Unless people are dying overseas, national or even local news get the front-and-center on newspapers in the US. I think it is fabulous that the Chi Sox broke their curse, but the world didn't stop spinning for them to do so. Something about a change in the world should be on the front page, not a report on the last game of this year's most successful team in a privately-ownded sporting league.

Regarding television news, it has nearly always been a joke. It is a part of the sensory overload so many people have come to expect. The news does not change because a camera is thrown into the mix. People could be informed quite well by a news reader lecturing with a few slides as visual aids, but that would fail to get the ratings of watching packages. I have seen CNN, Fox News, CBS, NBC, ABC, MSN, and too many other TV news networks to mention all blowing hours at a time watching "suspicious packages" left in transit stations on a live feed. On the off chance that something does go awry, they'll get the best camera angle on the carnage and perhaps make some more money from ads and good ratings.

So long as newspaper and TV news prefer sensationalism to reporting, people who want information are going to look elsewhere. This may be one of the "worst newspaper years" in the US simply because the US does the worst job covering news.

Re:Newspaper is killing the newspaper.

[Anonymous Coward]

Truly, *snip*

Indeed, I truly think you've found a way to stop overusing 'indeed,' CyricZ

Re:Newspaper is killing the newspaper.

[Short Circuit]

It's worse than you think. We've been drifting back towards party-endorsed newspapers for longer than I've been alive.

You think freedom of the press has always been about keeping an informed public? Originally, the first ammendment was excepted because each politician knew he didn't want his party's newspapers silenced when his party wasn't in power.

However, I'll take the occasional hack journalist over state-controlled media any day. It's better to be a lemming with good vision than a horse with blinders on.

Re:Newspaper is killing the newspaper.

[Kafka_Canada]

Funny how quickly Judith Miller fell from angel to Rove plant in the eyes of a few morons.

Re:Newspaper is killing the newspaper.

[starcraftsicko]

Mod Parent up!

Ever since "journalism" rather than medicine or sciences became the field of choice for people who wanted to change the world, newspapers have been less about news and more about political viewpoint.

Re:Newspaper is killing the newspaper.

[jmv]

it's a mistake to rely on any one source of news, any one perspective

Sure but not all news source have the same value either. Something like the BBC is "worth" a lot more than CNN/Fox and many others combined. ...and no I'm not british.

Re:Newspaper is killing the newspaper.

[bnitsua]

I've always found the Christian Science Monitor to be "balanced" with a "comprehensive understanding of current issues." In fact, it is the only newspaper around I would call "unbiased."
but, like you, I read news from many sources... lately, I find myself enjoying google's news aggregator more and more.

Re:Newspaper is killing the newspaper.

[JVert]

Its not even the articles, $.25 was a fair price for the FRY's ad and some intresting readings in the classified, but for $.75 i'll just flip to the back of the sports page while paying for gas, and put it back.

Re:Newspaper is killing the newspaper.

[sinewalker]

it's a mistake to rely on any one source of news

I agree whole-heartedly!

Of course, this is an observation that is new to the "mainstream" of our generation. Many people in my parent's generation would only "trust" one source. Indeed, most television news programs and newspapers still advertise themselves today as "your most trusted news source" as if it is a good thing to only focus on one!

I feel this is a reflection on our increased education, more than it is about the internet, or even the quality of newspapers (which has declined markedly in the last 10 years). More people with university education (completed or not) means that more people understand your observation of the importance of a varied news source.

It means more people recognise that present-day journalist are either hacks, or payed-for schills of whichever "cause" the story is supporting (it used to be that papers reported facts, not "stories").

This is compounded by the Internet, because people are finding it easier to get alternate views from sources besides their "trusted" newspapers. And as they learn that, in fact, you can't trust your newspapers, they turn to whatever source that they feel they can trust.

Re:Newspaper is killing the newspaper.

[FireBreathingDog]

BBC may have more in-depth storytelling, better production values, and intellectual-sounding accents on the TV personalities, but if you think it's any less biased than CNN, Fox News, NY Times, NPR, Washington Times, Rush Limbaugh, etc., then you're fooling yourself.

*Every* outlet is biased, because *every* outlet is staffed with fallible people who all have their own set of preferences. And consciously or subconsciously, innocently or deviously, that bias inevitably seeps into reporting.

Re:Newspaper is killing the newspaper.

[StressedEd]

You rarely see children reading newspapers. You probably won't see a McDonald's employee reading a paper, nor will you see a construction worker or a clothing salesperson.

Pardon? I can only assume you have not discovered "The Sun". It's a very British rag which almost always decides the result of a general election....

...allegedly.

Re:Internet Killed Frankenstein tonight

[Anonymous Coward]

I just read that video killed the radio star.

Has anyone else heard that?

Efficiency

[Jesus IS the Devil]

The world gravitates toward efficiency. Instant delivery, little cost, up-to-date. How can newspapers compete?

Yellow pages are dying horrible deaths too, and I'm loving every minute of it. Just look at how these online yellow pages are trying to force ads and sponsored listings on the first page, making it ridiculously difficult to get local results you really want. Then look at how quickly you can find something via a search engine.

Re:Efficiency

[prockcore]

Instant delivery, little cost, up-to-date. How can newspapers compete?

Investigative reporting. That's still where the newspaper outpaces all other forms of news.

The hardcopy might go away, but newspapers have their own websites.

Re:Efficiency

[king-manic]

Investigative reporting. That's still where the newspaper outpaces all other forms of news.

The hardcopy might go away, but newspapers have their own websites.

You mean getting second hand information, publishing it as the truth and publishing a very small retraction when your severely wrong?

Re:Efficiency

[CyricZ]

Investigative reporting. That's still where the newspaper outpaces all other forms of news.

Except that they don't do that now, and probably won't in the future. Doing so to a professional degree would certainly cause severe annoyance to various advertisers and politicians. Soon enough ad space isn't bought, and press credentials are revoked. Then they're really fucked.

Re:Efficiency

[prockcore]

Except that they don't do that now, and probably won't in the future.

While there certainly is less and less investigative reporting (much to my dismay, reporting current events is something for the AP wire), it does still exist.

I can think of two recent examples from my local paper alone. One is how DHS lied about how many people die crossing the border and how their numbers don't match up with the actual recorded deaths. Congress actually ended up using the newspaper's database to show how DHS was playing fast and loose with the numbers.

The other one is a report on how inaccurate the local gas pumps are. They claim they output a gallon but they really shortchange you. There was even a nice little map that showed which stations were the worst and by how much.

Bloggers are fairly lazy. They won't hound their local city government for raw data... if it's not on google, then it doesn't exist.

Re:Efficiency

[Jesus IS the Devil]

Yes "some" investigative reporting. The only problem is, there's no oversight of media companies who abuse their positions. Nobody's watching the foxes (reporters and media companies).

Re:Efficiency

[nine-times]

Investigative reporting. That's still where the newspaper outpaces all other forms of news.

You mean like when they go looking for news stories on FARK? Or when they reported on how bloggers figured out Dan Rather's papers were bogus?

That's some good investigating.

My dad used to read the paper every day

[Stevyn]

Now he reads several papers a day. It's a lot easier and faster to scan the paper for articles you're interested in on a website than flipping through a few papers. And the ads on the website can be just as effective as the ones in the paper if done right.

Re:My dad used to read the paper every day

[Pichu0102]

Several papers a day? That seems a bit... well... wasteful. Things like having to read more than one paper is why people turn to things like the internet. The internet is where people can express their opinions as well as read others instead of just depending on journalists opinions, and that's a powerful thing.

Re:My dad used to read the paper every day

[Stevyn]

Sorry if it was too subtle, but that was the whole point of my comment. He USED to read a paper a day, now he reads SEVERAL papers a day. I'll be more blunt:

He checked the websites of the newspaper instead of purchasing the paper, reading the paper, and dealing with the mountain of paper he would accumulate each week.

OMG!

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot has broken free from the MATRIX!!! The Slashdot effect will destroy us all!

Reading in real world ...

[calvin1981]

... sucks. What sort of reading is it if I cant even grep.

Re:Reading in real world ...

[Fallingcow]

Agreed.

I download ebook versions of the books I own whenever I stumble accross them or think to do a search on Emule or what have you, just so I can do searches in them when I want.

Re:Reading in real world ...

[sirboxalot]

Even in this world of user interfaces and instant satisfaction, there will ALWAYS be an appeal for a tangible book, newspaper, or magazine. Call me old-fashioned, but I would prefer to sit down with a hot cup of tea and a huge hardback book than a hot cup of tea and my laptop.

Giveaways

[tooth]

This is why the major papers in .au always give away "free" stuff with their weekend papers. The latest trend is Music CDs.

Re:Giveaways

[MichaelSmith]

The latest trend is Music CDs.

Mark Shuttleworth really should have a talk with the advertising department of The Age...

Re:Giveaways

[Nqdiddles]

Somewhat true, yes.
As someone who as spent some years in the newspaper industry I can tell you the promotions, competitions and give-aways are just a fancy way of cooking the books.
Newspaper circulation (in Australia at least) works on six monthly audit periods - basically an average sales figure for each edition, minus days judged to be "audit free" (some public holidays).
The promotions are planned to take place whenever necessary to "bump up the figures" - usually one major promotion (car give-away) every six months, with smaller promotions scattered in between (cd's, books, movie tickets, etc).
The key fact is that Advertising Charges are based on the audited circulation figures. They can't charge more for ads unless they're reaching more people. Promotions allow them to bump up the average sales, which is confirmed through and ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulation) and then reflected in the advertising charges.
The motivation for promotions and any other efforts to increase reader base is to increase the revenue coming in, in the form of advertising. Cover prices do not in any way come close to paying the cost of running a newspaper - and these are very big business, with amazing demands on their management to increase profit.
The quality of the news just gets lost along the way in a lot of cases.

The two aren't mutually exclusive

[Audent]

Here at Computerworld New Zealand we have both a paper edition (weekly) and a daily online service http://www.computerworld.co.nz/ and I like to think they serve different readers in different ways.

Take a breaking news story (HP buys Compaq is my favourite example). We ran a BREAKING NEWS thing on the site immediately. We ran a follow-up story later that day with industry reaction (such as it was) also online. The next morning we had the customer comments/expectations story online, while most daily newspapers here were only just running the equivalent of our first story.

By the time our weekly print edition came out we had a full round-up of comment locally plus international expectations etc for a more rounded view.

That's the best approach I feel. Break news online (with attendant email alerts, SMS alerts or whatever you've got going) with more detailed relfective stuff in print.

This isn't new - print had to cope with radio beating it to news and TV (film at eleven!) doing what we couldn't do. What print does well is take a step back and offer a critical analytical assessment. In depth stuff. Well, that's what print SHOULD do well.

The two aren't mutually exclusive - print and online can co-exist quite nicely thank you. You add immediacy to your print edition with online. You add depth to your online edition through print. Different readers are served in different ways.

Re:The two aren't mutually exclusive

[globalar]

Exactly. The key is editing, summary, and analysis. We should also add investigation, when that still happens.

The Internet is great for instant information, opinions, and huge amounts of both. But it is very spotty when it comes to analysis, SNR, and summary. Typically, it takes a little time for information to be properly filtered and recommunicated. This delay allows print publications time to catch up and this material can still be placed on the web later. Fundamentally, the act of publication forces information to be cut down, crap to be thrown out, and resources to be focused. There are papers that do this well and some that do it very poorly.

An excellent example is the Economist. I can find virtually every piece of information from that publication through some other channel before the print edition hits a stand. I do not, however, have the time to summarize, anaylze, and edit as the Economist does. Nothing in that publication is revolutionary or, in fact, beyond what I could generate. But it saves me countless hours of research.

Yep

[Andrew Tanenbaum]

I get all of my news from blogs, and I haven't looked at a single thing in print since Web 2.0 came out.

If newspapers were worth reading...

[Anthrem]

...then they wouldn't go down in circulation. After all, I go to the internet when I want to know, right now, what is happening in the world. However, I still like to read the newspaper when there is thoughtful and well written investigation of the facts of the world. As well, the newspaper is what I count on for local information and politics. The difficult part is that my hometown newpaper, The Journal Star can be read in about 5 minutes, and there is little to nothing of value in the paper about local events and information regarding the world close to me. Lots of ads, but little or nothing like what people remember newspapers to be. The trend here I think will continue; the information highway is broad and fast, but not very deep. I feel like information is pretty useless at times, if those who report it do not try to contexualize it to the world around us. This is what is missing from newspapers.

internet is the new newspaper

[uncreativ]

Seriously, why bother with the paper anyway? Electronic is quicker, easier, and less expensive to produce and distribute.

Re:internet is the new newspaper

[bljohnson0]

Why bother? Why bother!!!?? I have moving to do damnit, and I need those papers to pack my breakables!

Re:internet is the new newspaper

[Lord Kano]

Seriously, why bother with the paper anyway? Electronic is quicker, easier, and less expensive to produce and distribute.

I'm reminded of a sketch from "You Can't Do That On Television" where someone tells the paperboy that the only reason they still have a newspaper subscription is because you can't line a birdcage with a computer screen.

LK

Three uses

[tomstdenis]

1. Look smart in airport

2. Cover head in rain

3. It's better than nothing when you run out of TP.

**stop cutting down trees for what ammounts to voyeurism and blatant stupidity!***

Tom

If it kills the NYT...

[Nom du Keyboard]

If it kills the New York Times, then it's a good thing. They've been too full of themselves for far too long and I wouldn't miss them at all.

[/opinion]

Re:Internet Killed Frankenstein tonight

[Agret]

Poor poor Frankenstein, may he rest in peace.

Terminals in Stalls

[blunte]

Once they get web-enabled terminals in bathroom stalls (it will happen!), then there will be another big drop in newspaper subscriptions.

I read the paper regularly (no pun intended), but only because I'm something of a captive audience, and the paper is just right there...

Someone please use the Netcraft meme

[Anonymous Writer]

Unless of course, it is dead too.

Just like downloads are hurting musicians

[Anonymous Coward]

Online media are not necessarily responsible for killing print media. Something is taking the time that people used to spend reading the paper. You could make the point that unpaid overtime is responsible for killing the print media just as much as online media are. It is going to be just as hard to prove as it is to prove that downloads are or are not hurting the music industry.

Even if print advertising goes to zero, it doesn't mean that advertisers will spend their money on the internet. How does the local flower seller advertise to me? Well, he could place an ad on Groklaw. That's not likely to happen but I spend more time reading Groklaw as I do the local rag.

The bottom line is that the rules of the game are changing and nobody has figured out what they are yet. The situation is much the same as that of software companies who are confronted by open source. How the heck do you make money in an open source environment?

Same old song

[theantipop]

Video killed the radio star, etc.

From a newspaper loyalist

[bananahammock]

To me, after downing that mug of coffee in the morning, ya still can't beat dropping a couple of kids off at the pool with a good ol' newspaper. A laptop just doesn't quite cut it.

In other news....

[Celsius 233]

Video is killing the radio star.

Needs more cowbell...

[Anonymous Coward]

A more creative title might have been, "Internet killed the Daily Star".

"Growth" is flat, so try innovating

[jbarr]

OK, I'm certainly no economist, but so what? The article says that the growth is flat. Companies and industries that expect constant growth are kidding themselves. There are bound to be flat and negative growth periods in all industries. Maybe it's time that they start looking for better innovation like, oh, I don't know, real reporting instead of the biased, sensationalistic, editorial spin that has crept in over the last couple decades. It used to be that news was reported, not opinionated and editorialized at every chance. I would take printed news (or any news for that matter) a lot more seriously if it gave the facts instead of trying to sway me.

Re:"Growth" is flat, so try innovating

[CrowScape]

Correction: it never used to be that news was not opinionated, it simply used to be that no one noticed. The professionalism of journalism was the biggest hoax of the twentieth century, the last thing newspapers should do is seek a return.

Re:"Growth" is flat, so try innovating

[PhreakOfTime]

No, you defintely are not an economist. But you also arent much of a realist either

It never ceases to amaze me how easily people automatically think the past is some sort of "good ol' days". And you have given yet another fine example of this part of human nature.

Newspapers were practically invented in this country to be sensationalist, and full of lies. More specifically, full of lies about the owners competitors. Perhaps you think the term "yellow journalism" is some sort of new concept. Perhaps you should look into the life of Rockefeller, or McCormick and his alliance with the chicago tribune.

Son, this is nothing new, the only thing that is different is that more people KNOW it is bullshit and ads. Although, the recent two presidential elections still leave that up to a healthy debate.

Basically, if you want 'facts' you should be reading scientific journals, not newspapers. Otherwise what you are asking for is 'someone else' to gather all the information YOU want, because frankly you are lazy and dont know where to look. If something is so important to you that you want to read about it, then you would be best served by gathering your own facts. Anything less leaves you no room to complain, and makes you look like a simpleton.

Lets take an relevant example, your post. From that there are certain 'facts' which can be ascertained;
1) You are white
2) You are probably in your early to mid 30's
3) You are not an economist

And the following are 'editorial content'
1) Such a poor grasp of understanding human nature has left you bitter to the ways of women
2) Although you are not specifically aligned politically, you voted for Bush at least once.
3) Even though you dont have an accurate idea on the subject, proven by your statement of referring to the 'good old days', you still have formulated a solution. Although based on what you THINK the problem is, and not on what the actual problem is. And no amount of facts will change your opinions, based mostly on your reaction to reading this so far...

Conclusion
You do not want to be presented facts. You want presented to you the things you want to read, whether they are facts or not. You have already formed your opinion and are looking for corroborative articles to back it up.

In the end, ask yourself who is feeding you 'information'? Yourself, or someone else?

B.T.W - No one other than white males uses the term 'good old days'. Your language exposes your truth. Just imagine if you knew that, how much easier things would be...

Re:"Growth" is flat, so try innovating

[SEE]

B.T.W - No one other than white males uses the term 'good old days'.

Really? So both of my grandmothers were actually men?

Re:"Growth" is flat, so try innovating

[PhreakOfTime]

You neglected to say if they were white or not.

I am talking about people who ARE alive. Thus the use of present tense, i.e. 'uses' and not 'used'. Are they alive?

If youre gonna nitpick, you better come prepared.

Re:"Growth" is flat, so try innovating

[Percy_Blakeney]

I am talking about people who ARE alive... If youre gonna nitpick, you better come prepared.

Wow, I can't figure out whether you're trying to be funny or not.

Re:"Growth" is flat, so try innovating

[Cro Magnon]

My mom still uses that phrase, and last time I checked, she was still alive. She's not male either. She is white, but I bet there are plenty of old blacks who say the same thing.

Re:"Growth" is flat, so try innovating

[Anonymous Coward]

...And also the 19th and 18th centuries. If anyone thinks Rather's "unimpeachable source" is bad, do some research about Benjamin Bache.

Re:"Growth" is flat, so try innovating

[jbarr]

While your responses were interesting (though several points are quite unfounded) the fact remains that news reporting (or at least the theoretical intent of news reporting) has degraded from factual reporting to editorial bias and opinion that is passed off as fact. News reporting carries with it an ethical obligation to impart information that is unbiased and true--something of which most news reporting falls far too short. And for a company to claim foul because their growth has slowed or flattened is simply evidence of irrational expectations. Entrepeneurial thinking rarely concedes to anything less than success, but the reality is that sales and growth trends fluctuate. The article is nothing more than hype about a sector that refuses to innovate.

Re:"Growth" is flat, so try innovating

[Anonymous Coward]

It's interesting how the parent of your post never actually used the term "good old boys", yet you make sweeping assertions based on that phrase. Your post is an excellent example of how facts can be so easily twisted with opinion and bias.

Re:"Growth" is flat, so try innovating

[CrowScape]

In the 19th and 18th century, there wasn't the idea of professionalism we have today. Newspapers back then were generally unabashidly partisan. Since professionalism was really a 20th century phenomena, I limited it to that century.

Re:"Growth" is flat, so try innovating

[PhreakOfTime]

I can appreciate the fact that YOU think the role of journalism has changed. But that is the only thing that has changed here, not journalists, only your perception of them over time. And to the notion of some sort of 'ethical' responsibility, well people will say all sorts of things to justify their employment. Just consider yourself lucky that you became aware of that fact in your lifetime, for most do not.

But the fact still remains, newspapers, and journalism in general are a means to convey a certain message to the public. It has nothing, and never has had anything, to do with factual reporting. Read just a sample, you can find your own if you just look; Publishing War William Randolph Hurst, and Jospeph Pulitzer. Robert McCormick, or any other OWNER of media distribution have ALWAYS told you what they wanted to tell you, and thats all. There has never been any sort of universal notion among any educated person, that newspapers are a reliable source of facts based on some sort of 'ethics'. There is on the other hand, no shortage of people who are willing to believe anything you tell them... even if the 'facts' are just made up to increase your print circulation. Snake oil salesman didnt sell their goods to tree posts after all...

And innovate? That is not even an option! Newspapers are a method of spreading propaganda, thats all. They have been innovated to almost a state of perfection. Because you are just now realizing this, does not make it an external truth universal to everyone. Its not an accident that a REPORTER was paid by the white house to spew PROPAGANDA about the no child left behind act. That is precisely what reporters do, and all they have ever done. This guy just was exposed.

Im not trying to attack you personally, but you are white, and that I am sure of. Some of the statements I made are unfounded of course, beacause I gathered only things I felt were of value, some of the statements I made were just opinions and 'sensationalism' to make my point more interesting to those other than the two of us who might be reading this(it does work that way).

Newspaper have to evolve

[r2q2]

Newspapers have to evolve into part newspaper part website to stay current. Also they need content like blogs or other parts for them to be attractive to people who view news.

Efficiency-Adblock.

[Anonymous Coward]

"The world gravitates toward efficiency. Instant delivery, little cost, up-to-date. How can newspapers compete?"

The NYTs certainly tries, and look at how we treat them. We DON"T want newspapers to succeed. No matter what. Free is our mantra, and we will slay anyone living in a capitalists world.

"Yellow pages are dying horrible deaths too, and I'm loving every minute of it. Just look at how these online yellow pages are trying to force ads and sponsored listings on the first page, making it ridiculously difficult to get local results you really want. Then look at how quickly you can find something via a search engine."

I've also found both inaccuracies, as well as numbers that never will show up. Besides yellow pages aren't as "dying" as you think (*looks over at the FREE yellow pages delivered last week*). Plus not everyone wants or has internet access, as well as all the advantages print has over reading off a screen. e.g. power failure, and yes phones do still work during such an event.

Is the newspaper still a practical business model?

[greyjoy]

As they are, newspapers rely on two sources of revenue: direct sale and advertising sponsorship. With the advent of the Internet, information is free -- and newspapers, in order to remain relevant, must offer their articles for the same price or risk the certainty of readers going to a free competitor.

Unfortunately, doing so completely wipes out their subscription base. And I doubt advertising alone will be enough to sustain high-end staffs such as (despite an earlier criticism of the paper in this feedback) those on The New York Times. It'll be interesting to see if, or when, major papers shut down because they lose too much money investigating stories -- or if, more likely, they simply downgrade to the usual nonsense of hyping a murder trial or a missing white woman. Either way, however great a revolution the Internet may be for widespread communication and education, I mourn for what seems the eventual demise of professional journalism. Does anyone want a future of Fox News-caliber media?

Still, at least in my opinion, the good that is free and instant and widespread information weighs out the evil of such losses.

Old and busted ... new hotness

[Stevarino]

Newspapers...online news
Magazines...online entertainment
Terrestrial radio...satellite radio
Yellow pages...search engines
Film...digital
Paper maps...internet mapping/gps

Hopefully:

Ballot voting...internet voting
SSN/passport...world digital ID
Bills and coins...money card

Newspaper != news paper

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Traditionally, the newspapers were there to deliver news. Now by the time people read stuff in the papaers they have already been exposed to TV, radio and cnn.com. Therefor newspapers look more and more to providing alternative commentary. Essentially they're getting more and more like weekly womens' magazines but targeted towards a wider audience.

Already TV news is less about news and more about entertainment. The paper is getting more like that too. There are so many media channels etc competing for peoples free time (== entertainment time) that the news has to be entertaining and gripping rather than factual.

Re:Newspaper != news paper

[DennyK]

The only chance newspapers have of surviving is to provide some sort of "alternative commentary". Open a typical newspaper today, and what do you see? A bunch of national news, most of it compiled or simply copied directly from the wire services, and maybe a couple of local interest articles. Much of their content just covers the four Ws (who, what, when, where) and stops there. That was a fine approach a decade ago when newspapers would be the most up-to-date news source that most people had access to, aside from television and radio newscasts which usually provide even less detail. However, it just doesn't work today. Why am I going to pay a good chunk of money every month for a newspaper that consists mostly of ads and stuff from the AP or Reuters that I already read word-for-word on CNN.com the day before?

Basically, newspapers are going to have to provide something besides stale wire reports and three-paragraph news articles. More focus on local news and issues would be a start. Forget the national news; most people already get that from other sources long before it's published in a newspaper. Stick with the local stuff, the things people won't find anywhere except their hometown paper. If you are going to cover a national news story, go beyond the four Ws. Have your reporters do some more in-depth analysis or investigation. Basically, give people something they can't find ten thousand identical copies of at news.google.com.

Re:Newspaper != news paper

[tez_h]

The only chance newspapers have of surviving is to provide some sort of "alternative commentary".

I disagree that the only way of surviving is the alternative commentary route. Consider that the sophistication of readers has increased somewhat, with a greater awareness of bias and editorial interest.

There may never have been a Golden Age of journalism, but I feel that a good journalist should be objective and have a relentless curiosity. Now, 'objectivity' is paid lip-service to with a bogus, equal-time-to-all-sides-of-the-debate-regardless-o f-merit kind of counterpoint. That is the sort of thing I think 'alternative commentary' entails.

Instead, established media should really be exploiting the resources that are unique to them, namely access (especially, say, to politicians, law enforcement officers, eye-witnesses) and funding (for travel, equipment, crew). We are aware of editorial bias, as are they. They should acknowledge it from time-to-time, but in no way try to hide it, or somehow distort their view by attempting to bludgeon it.

Anyway, to mince my own words, this is quite a generalisation. There are great journalists and media outlets, and there are poor ones. They attempt to sell both to the over-critical and the uninformed alike. And the established, print-only media is now a myth -- they all have a hand in the online biz.

-Tez

Re:Newspaper != news paper

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer, sadly, is that that type of coverage costs a lot of money to the papers. It's much easier to just pay for the AP story rather than salary a staff reporter to cover said story in 'local' detail. Furthermore, by the time that the local reporter writes his story, it's usually too little too late.

I live in Memphis, and the Commercial Appeal is one of the worst newspapers I've ever read, and that includes a high school newspaper I was an editor of. They routinely write 'local' columns that are days behind the actual story and have the intellectual fodder of a rice cake.

Re:Newspaper != news paper

[biobogonics]

Traditionally, the newspapers were there to deliver news.

In the small city where I live the newspaper still does this. The national stories are all from the wire services but nothing beats their coverage of local news.

I read the local paper to see 1) stories about people I know 2) high school sports 3) obituaries - which of our customers have died.

When they finally decide where to put the new county jail, maybe I will stop reading the paper.

Re:Newspaper != news paper

[operagost]

The newspapers have discarded investigative journalism in favor of editorializing on the front page. Wild speculation and bias has replaced truth.

Re:Newspaper != news paper

[operagost]

I read the local paper to see 1) stories about people I know 2) high school sports 3) obituaries - which of our customers have died.

I wonder: do funeral directors read the obits to see which of their potential customers has died?

2 Types of 'News'

[gr84b8]

I personally am heavily reliant on the instant rss feeds of news to keep a tab on what's going on, which is certainly a critical part of my news reading.

However, I also rely on the top traditional newspapers for well written, thoughtful commentary on the news (even if it is "yesterday's news". The AP (et. al.) reports are informative, but generally are whipped together and provide little to no actual content. Beyond headline surfing I love to sit down and read a well written news story that was carefully crafted and researched so I can consider myself truly informed.

Re:Newspaper is killing the newspaper

[harisund]

Maybe they should conduct a poll how many slashdotters read newspapers? Not all readers get a chance to voice their opinions on newspapers. In on online version, people can post their views (Slashdot itself being a prime example) and can engage in lively arguments too.. the kind of interactivity that you don't find in paper.. Another interesting factor is the concept of archives.. a news article in a paper might have "In the story that we ran on 18th.." Even if I had read the article on that the news is referring to, there is nothing like having a hyperlink to that article that quickly allows me to scan the contents and return to what I was reading (again, how many times have we seen news on Slashdot referring to an older news on Slashdot itself?) Traditionally, newspapers have been associated with a cup of coffee on early mornings, rocking chairs and the like (if you can get my picture)... in today's fast paced hectic world, there is hardly a time to relax.. Still.. I don't quite think e-newspaper will completely phase out the print edition. The feel of paper on my hands can not be replicated by a tablet.. definitely not

Fish and chips

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't wrap your fish and chips in the Internet.

So in other words...

[TechniMyoko]

The internet is saving the rainforest.

It's a good thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, the internet is killing the newspaper, and I say "good riddance". Online news is updated more frequently, and usually contains more information (thanks to the ability to link to resources external to the article itself). The only use for an actual newspaper I have these days is keeping up to date with local events occurring within my city. Once those smaller publications begin to deliver their news online, I'll be able to do away with printed paper altogether. This is a very, very good thing. The newspaper served a great purpose for years, and now it's obsolete. Let's move on.

is it really the internet

[iggymanz]

or are cable tv news and radio the real culprit? both of those are growing. Via cable tv I get news from around the globe, very different view than U.S. media. Radio is still hot after all these years because we still drive & any media more involved would likely make us crash.

So just what in the heck...

[jpellino]

... are we supposed to put in our bird cages? Huh? HUH!?

See, nobody thinks of these things before they haul off and invent something like teh interweb.

What are we supposed to do with all this bird poop?

Oh, wait - there's plenty of blogs to fill. Never mind.

Re:So just what in the heck...

[innocent_white_lamb]

... are we supposed to put in our bird cages? Huh? HUH!?
 
Flyers, of course.
 
My bird has the opportunity to enjoy reading all of last week's Co-op specials every Sunday afternoon.

Ad revenue

[Anonymous Coward]

The ad revenue can be much higher looking at the traffic on some of the news sites. Too bad their pricing is so expensive, lots of household brands can't afford it.

Good

[DustyShadow]

Less newspapers printed, the less trees are wasted...

What about exclusive online news?

[useruser]

5% of newspaper revenues? Presumably that only counts online newspapers that have corresponding print media. What about online news sources that are exclusively online such as Slate and Salon? Salon has been getting my money for years instead of my local Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Re:What about exclusive online news?

[DustMagnet]

I also wonder if it counts classified ads. These are a major source of income for newspapers and the only reason I use my lame local newspaper (online). This is also a big threat to newspapers, since they really suck at doing clissified ads online. Almost anyone could do a better job, but newspapers have the established customer base.

In other recent news..

[Bananatree3]

the recent introduction of the car has caused many buggy-manufacturers to loose buisness.

Interesting that classified is UP in newspapers

[CatOne]

I would think stuff like Craig's List would slaughter it. So much more dynamic, so much easier to get the word out (and very effectively in large markets like the SF Bay Area -- not sure how good it is elsewhere)... and FREE.

There are times I think a newspaper is great -- on a train, on an airplane, or when I want to sit outside in the sun with a cup of coffee. So for relaxing news delivery. But most of the time, web sites (or, even better, RSS feeds) are just so much more timely. And with RSS, I can get the headlines from a few sources, so when one site cock-blocks me by invalidating my BugMeNot login (cough, FY NYT!), I can read the article elsewhere, or just be content with the title.

So many reasons for this

[clark625]

I've never been one to read the newspaper regularly anyway; however, if I had nothing to do and a paper was around, I would happily read it since I find that reading anything is better than TV, twiddling thumbs, or sitting quietly with a dumb look on my face. Yes, the news is old (so it's not news, exactly), but it's supposed to go more in-depth than TV news can. Friends and family tell me that newspaper reporters have gotten bland, and at times liberal opinion makes it into stories that are supposed to report news, not editorials. Okay, fine.

I do buy the paper now, though, on Sunday. That's it. I read the cartoons, do the crossword, and flip through the advertisements for my favorite stores. My wife clips out the coupons, and reads the cartoons once I'm done with them.

The rest of the 10 lb. brick I receive? Recycled immediately. Every time I actually pick it up and start to read, I find articles that honestly aren't all that exciting beyond what I either all ready know, or I just flat out don't care about some lady's new cookie store. Sorry. That's the breaks. And I pay to recycle all that wasted paper. *sigh*

News!

[rhetoric]

In other news: Newspapers are killing trees!

I read all about you

[everphilski]

in the New York Times ... maybe not anymore?
 
-everphilski-

Dead Tree Edition

[MDMurphy]

Newspapers can still be around, they just need to evolve. They've got the reporters and researchers, so they're in a good position for reporting detailed stories with more depth than TV can do in a 30 second blurb. Seeing a story in the conext of previous weeks or months of background articles is also easier with text than dozens of clips of newspeople reading short snippets on-air.

It's the dead tree versions that don't make as much sense. Lots of people don't want yesterday's news. But no reason that a well written newspaper can't write a web version just as well.

And the thick Sunday version with the sale ads and magazines are still popular. So they don't need to retire the presses. But basing your entire business model around delivering paper to porches, yeah, that'd dead.

Re:Dead Tree Edition

[Rayonic]

They've got the reporters and researchers

Sorry, those have been downgraded to "writers" and "googlers".

It's not about the news

[oboreruhito]

Many people who read newspapers don't read it for the news. They read it for classifieds and advertisements - when and where the sales are, what's on sale, what to get and what it looks like. Most of the rest read it for the crossword puzzle, the Jumble, that Japanese numbers game and comics.

For the Internet-connected middle-class, those functions of a newspaper are obsolete. eBay and craigslist are killing classifieds; online shopping is hurting retailers and makes print ads (which, in turn, hurts newspaper ads); and online games, webcomics and portable electronic games are slowly squeezing out newspaper games.

Those people probably don't give a damn about the news, except for what they watch on Fox/CNN while eating dinner, and what's in the newspaper was covered yesterday anyway.

The only exception is local news, and outside of high school sports, most of it is either local government news that is boring and/or goes over their head, or fluff nobody wants to read. (High school football alone, especially in the South, keeps some papers afloat.) The newspapers that succeed today - and there are several - have excellent local news reporting on topics that people care about, because local TV outlets are complete pushovers when it comes to in-depth reporting.

And then they turn around and post that content for free on the Web, where ads pay less, or they charge to access it, alienating their subscribers. Sucks to be print media.

Newspapers need to innovate or perish

[cove209]

(Speaking of my local paper here)
Such as:

Follow up stories on crimes that were reported locally, say a year or so ago, and nothing else is ever reported on the people that were charged.

An expose of how new and used car dealers screw over their customers. (Never happen due to ad revenue of course)

Same for TV

[diagonalfish]

The same thing is happening to TV news and weather programs. I can't recall the last time I sat and watched an evening news program for any length of time, and I only rarely get weather info from television. More often than not I just glance over Google News and then at my ForecastFox bar in Firefox. That tells me all I need to know, and from enough different sources that I can easily decide what's biased and what's not.

Given that, who needs the hassle of surfing channels and listening to news anchors blather endlessly about the state of post-Katrina New Orleans? I prefer my information to be served up quickly, in a format where I don't have to wait for commercial breaks.

it's "old" by the time you read it

[p51d007]

I think one of the reasons for the downfall of the newspaper, is that for the "daily" morning paper to make it to your door by the time you get up in the morning, it has to be put to bed by midnight, so it can be delivered to the areas. If the "breaking news" or headlines are different by say 7am, the internet will have up to date "news", making the print version obsolete.

Re:it's "old" by the time you read it

[CrazyTalk]

Not to mention the Sunday paper, which you can not only buy on Saturday, but once I've even seen it sitting on the corner of a store bundled (but not yet for sale) on a THURSDAY. I was tempted to sneak a peak and check the Saturday sports scores!

Re:it's "old" by the time you read it

[tezbobobo]

I don't know many people who boot the PC whilst having breakfast. Nor do I see many people on the train who have mobile internet, or have been assed to download the pages for reading (making the point of hyperlinking moot). And I don't see many people take there laptops into the lunchroom at morning tea to read the news.

The majority of industry is not IT oriented. I think the trend has nothing to do with instantaneous access. If that was the case, TV would have superceded the print decades ago. Instead, I would say it is part of the dumbification of society. Noam Chompsky's (only) good book, The Manufacture of Consent, has a lot to say about this.

Re:it's "old" by the time you read it

[Wildfire Darkstar]

I can only speak to the Washington Post, but the way the Sunday edition is handled there is that sections that are unlikely to be seriously impacted by up-to-the-minute news are published several days in advance. Things like the arts and comics sections, and the advertising supplements have to be ready to go well in advance of publication. Major local, national, and international news, the sports pages, and other things that can't be done up in advance are still printed the same morning they are distributed, and the two are combined for delivery.

Re:it's "old" by the time you read it

[Baikala]

I don't know many people who boot the PC whilst having breakfast

Why would this people boot their PC every morning? regular people don't install kernel patches every night... they don't even use linux.

Oh, I remember... they keep them off.

The Writing is on the Wall But Not In the Paper

[Ted Holmes]

The mass entertainment and news industry will soon compete with high quality virtually free grass roots alternatives from the digitally connected masses, and take its rightful place as another niche. What "mass" will be left to market to?

A woman in London during the transit bombings went to a public webcam and used her cell phone to report her observations and feelings. She may be the first to step in front of the new mass media, by and for the masses.

I was personally awestruck by how Del.icio.us and Flickr became channels for democratized real time reporting during the London bombings. Bloglines and RSS connected everything seamlessly, essentially turning the entire universe of Blogs into one stream.

Phone cams at one end took pictures from practically everywhere during and after the attacks. Enough people posted pics to http://flickr.com/photos/tags/london to extensively cover what was happening on the ground. Bloggers close to the scene provided ongoing summaries and updates.

As fresh news rushed to the Web from everywhere, http://del.icio.us/tag/london offered real-time-most-recommended links.

A couple of interesting facts: Since Bloglines includes the number of total subscribers to any feed you have subscribed to, you can tell at a glance how popular that feed is. The Flickr and del.icio.us feeds went into the hundreds from only a few subscribers within a couple of hours.

Completely spontaneous emergent mass media, by and for the masses. The digitally connected masses have leached the mass from media, now adjusting to its rightful place as simply another niche. In short, viable grass roots media has arrived.

Re:Newspaper is killing the newspaper

[shmlco]

"In the story that we ran on 18th.."

On the flip side, a major disadvantage of the web is mutability. How do I know that link to the story on the 18th is actually the same text that ran on the 18th? Heck, how do I know that you and I are reading the same article today?

For an interesting, behind the scenes look at things, one company I worked for had a news site, and part of the content came from Reuters. Part of the tagging in the news stream indicated "updated" versions of the same articles, that you were REQUIRED to replace.

If you pay attention to breaking stories on Yahoo, you can see the articles morph and change during the day...

The death is greatly exaggerated, it's a rebirth

[twitter]

Indeed, the death is greatly exaggerated. "Worst year ever" for flat growth? That's nuts, what a greedy bunch. No wonder many online newspapers are so stuffed with useless adverts. I've got news for them, don't do it because I've got my choices across the globe for news.

My first thought was, where's the money going? If the paper revenue is shrinking, the online advertisement market should pick up, within margins of waste reduction. The eyeballs and wallets behind them should be worth the same amount of money regardless of advertisement delivery. Google, is showing the way to make the money spent work better.

There's lots of good news in the numbers and it looks like publishing is going back to what it used to be. Local revenue is up and online advertising is up. This means local papers are able to exercise more control and that reflects the initial promise of the web - to allow a broader voicing of diverse opinion. The concentrated power of a few big papers and broadcasters of the last century was unhealthy. New providers, both national and local, are taking their place. I imagine they are underestimating online advertising revenue. A friend of mine runs a forum and nets $600/month off Google ads doing it. I use it to get local news of interest to me, would Goldman Sachs consider that news and count it? They should.

You are right for the wrong reasons

[Anonymous Coward]

Frankly since no newspaper is willing to report any good news from Iraq, and only dwell on one side of things - no wonder people are leaving the papers in droves. Not because of the things you were saying (which are ironically just echos of the MSM Iraq Thought of the Moment) but because people want full bodied noews, not just shrill harpys going on about hating this or hating that. In every story of substance the newspapers carefully look the other way as they echo the refrain across the land. What happened to original thinking or real investigative journalism?

Re:You are right for the wrong reasons

[Anonymous Coward]

But Politically Correct Hate is good hate.
Politically Incorrect Hate is ThoughtCrime.
Didn't you get your 4th edition of the NewSpeak dictionary yet?

Rehashed news among other things kills the papers

[Anonymous Coward]

Why pay for the news that you've read already? I used to subscribe to the NYT and while it'd be useful for on-the-go reading, most of what was covered in it I'd already read the night before. Newspapers are no longer the flash-whiz-bang breaking news sources. They're reading material for in the john or on the bus.

On top of that most people don't really want to know what's going on. Almost everybody here in Wisconsin watches the local news and reads the local papers. They find out about stuff that's consequential to them (ie, parades, weather, local government) but don't really want to concern themselves with the REAL world. For the most part people prefer ignorance.

Maybe if we had some good reporting from these larger papers people would pick up interest. But, they're competing with the entertainment side of things, so they pick the most flashy titles they can find (hell, look at how misleading half the slashdot topics' titles are). They cover the most asinine stuff to plaster their front pages with. Michael Jackson incident, Clinton affair, etc. Who the hell cares!?

Personally, I want a truthful, non-PC paper. I want a paper that will make a big fuss about things that should be noted by the people. If there's something going on that's wrong I want them to point it out, and not be afraid to criticize important people (ie, The President, etc).

Too biased, too many ads

[Bigbutt]

I get the Denver Post every morning and I read the paper. But the "news" is a single column or one and a half of each page. The rest are ads. Sometimes there are a couple of pages of ads (to offset the front pages full of news). Even the comics are mostly inane and unfunny (with a few exceptions; zits, sherman's lagoon, and a few others).

Then I read the news reading some of the interesting bits. Then I research the data on-line and see that it's just part of the story. I feel bad for the people who just read the newspaper(s) and don't get all the info or who aren't even interested in getting more data.

The funny part is that the ads that are targetted towards a male like me, are in the sports section which I don't read at all so I get all the guy info from the motorcycle forums I frequent or from the geek ones like /.

On the plus side, I do get a wider view of the news. I use that to step into the wider world and make myself check out non USAian news.

[John]

I hope the newspaper doesn't disappear

[elgee]

I can't fold my laptop and take it to the crapper with me.

In other recent news..Skills lost.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently invention of the Internet has improved people's spelling

Bad news for everybody

[codemangler]

Newspapers are cutting staff left and right. That means fewer reporters producing fewer stories, and that means fewer reasons for people to buy newspapers. Which will force even more downsizing.

What's worse is the effect this will have on all media. TV and radio stations already have very slim news staffs. They rely on newspaper stories as the starting point for many of their own stories. As do magazines. And this will affect blogs as well, as they usually write about what's been published elsewhere.

News starts with reporters, and most of them work for newspapers.

More people might prefer to read their news on the Internet, but with newspapers declining, there simply won't be as many stories to read.

Re:Bad news for everybody

[randyest]

What about bloggers? Can someone make a successful "peer" reviewed and validated online blog-based news source with micropayments for stories and photos, with some kind of social rating/filtering system? I bet someone does.

Re:Bad news for everybody

[idlake]

More people might prefer to read their news on the Internet, but with newspapers declining, there simply won't be as many stories to read.

Do you seriously believe that people all of a sudden lose interest in what's going on in the world and in their community just because some highly paid NYT reporter is laid off from his cushy job? Because photographs are made with $200 digicams by amateurs, instead of $8000 SLR cameras wielded by Pulitzer-prize hungry press photographers trying to find the artistically most compelling composition and most disturbing photograph? I don't think so.

What this will do is give a larger audience to non-traditional media and reporting, and I think that's a good thing. In the pre Internet days, the press was important and far better than nothing at all, but nowadays, newspapers and newspaper staff are an anachronism and should be abolished. The market is doing just that.

Re:Bad news for everybody

[Aldric]

And this will affect blogs as well

Just goes to show, every cloud has a silver lining. :)

Re:Bad news for everybody

[codemangler]

Do you seriously believe that people all of a sudden lose interest in what's going on in the world and in their community just because some highly paid NYT reporter is laid off from his cushy job? Because photographs are made with $200 digicams by amateurs, instead of $8000 SLR cameras wielded by Pulitzer-prize hungry press photographers trying to find the artistically most compelling composition and most disturbing photograph? I don't think so.

No, I don't think that at all. The demand for news will still be there. Amataeurs are more than welcome to try to fill the gap. But I think that (1)in many cases they won't bother, and (2)even if they do bother, they won't be given the same access as pros. Most news out there starts out as a report by a dead-tree journalist.

Re:Bad news for everybody

[Zane Edwards]

Maybe they should have thought of that BEFORE loosing credibility forcing people to access news (blogs) online.

Re:Bad news for everybody

[Anonymous Coward]

The newspaper industry is pretty poor in USA anyway, so it wouldn't take much to knock it down. People here seems to want TV 30 second summary and that's it. That's all they seem to want to digest. With the web they can keep that attitude by skimming through news sights for free, so they no longer need a newspaper.

But for those that really read the in depth articles and coverage, they may continue to purchase it or will purchase online access to the newspaper website.

Long term, news papers as we have them now won't exist, but epaper or online access everywhere will replace it. The news media companies need to adapt.

Re:Bad news for everybody

[idlake]

Amataeurs are more than welcome to try to fill the gap. But I think that (1)in many cases they won't bother

But there are a lot more of them, so it more than balances out.

(2)even if they do bother, they won't be given the same access as pros. Most news out there starts out as a report by a dead-tree journalist.

Do you think that access comes for free? Journalists given "special access" are expected to deliver, and they know it. I'd rather have no reporting on, say, a presidential candidate than have reporting from a journalist with special access, who knows that his livelihood depends on continuing to get special access.

Non-professionals are far less vulnerable to being manipulated. Bring your camera cell phone with you to political conventions and other places, and start snapping and recording away.

Internet is Killing the Newspaper

[MBCook]

No.

Radio threatened the Newspaper and took it's lunch money.

Broadcast TV beat it up.

Cable News kicked it while it was down (and then beat it up some more)

The internet is just finishing the job. The Newspaper has been killed by 3 previous mediums, and now a fourth is doing it. Newspapers will never go away, but they will never be what they were in before the 1950s again. As others have pointed out, Newspapers aren't what they used to be as the quality has declined and they are trying to more and more like gossip rags and 24 hour news channels which get printed once per day. Solid investigative reporting would keep them alive easily, instead we get AP wire reprints (which I already heard summarized on the radio and saw analyzed on TV). Now I can cut out the middle man and read these things off the wire online. Why do I need the paper for that.

And with wire stories like "New flash: President says he will name a new supreme court nominee at some point in the future" (there was one somewhat like that recently), I can't say much for their reporting.

Papers need to reorganize themselves and the kind of things they write/print if they want to become anything more than another local magazine. I'm sorry, but Newspapers are not in a good state right not (then again, neither is TV news).

The NYT is not "the paper of record" anymore, Edward R. Morrow and Walter Cronkite are gone from the in front of the camera. The entire news industry seems to be in a major crisis. They lost sight of reporting by realizing that they could just be the first to tell you something. 24 hour news channels hastened that problem. The internet and cell phones have taken it to it's logical conclusion.

I hope this all turns out well in a few years. I was getting mad at many of the magazines I used to love (gamer and computer magazines including GamePro, Nintendo Power, EGM, PC World, etc.) have fallen into the same trap so I've stopped reading most of them (I can get that info online for free, faster). I recently started reading a good magazine full of intelligent, insightful, and well researched articles: Forbes (yeah, different genre of magazines, but still). Newspapers (and TV news) need to go back to the same thing. They are all in a format of "Let's take that 1 minute news summary we did at the top of the hour and try to stretch it to 30 minutes" kind of "journalism", merged with "infotaiment" like Entertainment Tonight into one large affront to the intelligence of everyone.

I hope things turn out well. In the mean time, I will just continue to avoid more and more news sources as they get worse and worse. Some are still good. NPR had FANTASTIC, JOURNALISTIC coverage and analysis of Justice Robert's hearings. I learned a TON about the process and many other things by listening to their clips of the questioning with intelligent analysis and explanations. They're not always perfect, but they are one of the few left who even seem to try.

Re:Internet is Killing the Newspaper

[Crispy Critters]

"The internet is just finishing the job."

The newspaper has been dying for a long, long time.

When I was a kid, the nearest city (about a million people) had at least two real newspapers, one of which had a morning edition and an evening edition. It was down to one paper, one edition long before the web existed.

How many of your local papers have names that show that they are the result of a merger of two older papers? Like the Union Tribune or the Times-Picayune?

Re:Internet is Killing the Newspaper

[tsaler]

The point is simply speed.

Newspapers are a slow medium. The progression in the media that you have outlined has gone from fast to faster to faster yet to fastest.

Bloggers often are able to update their websites faster than online newspaper sites like nytimes.com, for example. So is it any surprise, then, that more people will go to a blog for breaking news than to a newspaper's website?

It's an information generation. I frankly don't think it's such a bad thing that people want more information faster. I would prefer not to go back to the days when people were comfortable reading about yesterday's news the next morning. The faster the medium, the more involved people are in it.

Just my two cents.

Re:Internet is Killing the Newspaper

[skubeedooo]

You should check out the Economist too. The articles are written by people who are truly intelligent and clued in on what they are writing about, and there is generally a very high content level.

Re:Internet is Killing the Newspaper

[MBCook]

Thanks. I saw someone else (maybe it was you) mention that elsewhere in this thread and I think I will. While I knew Forbes was a famous magazine and not just some little rag, I have to say I was blown away at the quality of the writing. I didn't think such intelligent magazines and such still existed (except as smaller circulation things, niche products, etc).

Thanks for the tip.

that could change if...

[scronline]

We could actually believe half of what the mass media says. And you know, the whole paperless system is a good thing. Not like we don't already cut down enough trees as it is.

Well, duh

[Skim123]

I would be surprised if my yet-to-be-conceived children approach me with utter disbelief one day, saying, "You mean people actually used to have the news printed on a piece of paper and delivered by another human being to their doorstep each morning?"

Things change.

[jcr]

In other news, whale-oil lamp makers reported another year of disappointing revenues.

-jcr

HE'S BACK!

[jcuervo]

You fixed him. Awesome. :-)

Re:HE'S BACK!

[xmas2003]

Yea, turned out that the fuse popped ... so thanx to some rolled up tin foil FRANKENSTEIN IS ALIVE!

I'll find a replacement fuse tomorrow.

Yes, but

[Omnieiunium]

Nothing can ever beat the feeling of the pages turning and sitting in a relaxing chair reading the paper. So far that is nothing that be replicated by any computer. Every morning I read the paper because I am not distracted, unlike I am on the computer. As well, there are a few things that the paper has that the internet doesn't, such as the crossword puzzle. I know you can get an online version, but it is just not the same. As well, it has comics, daily trivia, editorials and opinions which you have to pay for online. As well, on saturdays the paper has a weekly contest where you make up a little rhyme or title or some subject or another. They are really good. That can never be replicated by the internet.

Heh!

[M0b1u5]

Hello, I'm the milk man, I'm here to fix your dishwasher.

Gidday, I'm your cable guy, I'm here to fix your car.

Greetings, I'm a beautician, I'm here to mow your lawn.

A legitimate question is ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you slashdot then ?

True, you don't have to pay for it, but in most circumstances it's more than a day's late (and with dupes, typos, etc :) )

Why I pay

[adoll]

Simply, because I like the format - written news on my Palm. I like it so much that I pay for it. Anything of value to me is worth supporting.

Television can't do news properly and Radio is only useful for transmitting headlines and local news. If I want good coverage of international news, then I get an online newspaper and stuff it into Plucker and read it at my leasure.

-AD

Re:Why I pay

[gardyloo]

Simply, because I like the format - written news on my Palm.

      That's where I put my grocery lists. Only lowercase "p" on palm.

        That just doesn't sound right. Oh, well.

Too make matters worse, ...

[WindBourne]

The last 5 years have seen all the media here become totally none critical of politicians. Prior to 9/11, the media would actually research and the print interesting news about the national and local politicians. Now, I have found that Al Jazeera/BBC does a better job of reporting on our national stuff than does Denver Post and Rocky mountain news (with Al Jazeera you have to treat it like Old Pravda/ Current fox news and be careful of propoganda). Sad state of affairs.

Re:Too make matters worse, ...

[zxnos]

i only read the commentary / opinion and the comics in those two (one really) papers. i think all three of those sections are quite critical of politicians. my wife just mentioned an article in today's paper that i read online this morning. i think it is irrelevant for actual news. the only get them for is the sections i mentioned and the coupons. the money i save using coupons more than pays for the paper. even though the price of the paper here in denver skyrocketed when they merged, they still cut deals to get the paper on your front step.

Re:Too make matters worse, ...

[WindBourne]

Back in the 70's and 80's, they were critical. Not anymore. It seems like all logic is gone now. They both wait until an AP reporter has something. Even when dealing with state news, the politicians have had quite an easy time. Owens has not had any real critical thinking applied against him. At best, they wait until a story has broken in Westword or some other local rag and then go after it.

A trivial one is Owens and his "wife"; wife yes, but still not living in gov. mansion. Nor will she with a ~2 y.o. child running around from his 20 year old girlfriend who he has dated for at least 3 years.

I will say, that I do not care if the press leave him alone on that one (it is the man's personnel life), but I do object to a number of other issues that I am aware of. Likewise, they allowed the story on Campbell to die. Should not have happened.

To the press's credit back in the 70's,80', and even into the 90's, the politicians were kept under watch. Hence the reason why Reagan's white house was about to be indicted over Iran Contra when Poppa Bush pardoned all of them (that was his biggest mistake IMHO).

Advertising Revenues

[url80]

Also consider the fact that although online advertising click through rates (CTR) have fallen drastically from their debut of around 2% to around 0.2%, they have been slowing increasing with the onslaught of new intelligent relevency systems such as Google AdSense.

Additionally the pressure of online publishers to produce quality content is going to become much more critical than anytime prior. Sites like Digg can easily attest to quality of content when it comes to writing an article.

Write a Song

[Ranger]

"Internet Killed the Newspaper" doesn't have quite the same ring as "Video Killed the Radio Star." Of course newspaper will always have one advantage the Internet does not. You can always wipe your ass with it when you run out of toilet paper. Try that with a monitor.

"Print is Dead"

[Anonymous Coward]

Dr. Egon Spengler already predicted this in 1984.

Does this include account Free (as in beer) papers

[pseudosocrates]

Like many here no doubt, concurrent with pouring my morning coffee I check several sites. bbc.co.uk, theweathernetwork.com and football365.com. This gives me the means to decide if I should leave the house - if there's nuclear war, a hurricane or if City have lost I may well not do.

That said, I read a paper newspaper daily. The Metro (metronews.ca) is a free (ad-supported) newspaper that offers me as much news as I can read daily - 45 minutes on the way to work - with less ads than the major (not-free) dailies. Ok the journalism may not be as highbrow and neutral as such publications as the WSJ (US), the Times (UK) or the Globe (CA) [/irony], but frankly I am capable of researching a story if something catches my eye. And it has a crossword and sudoku. It also focuses on the one aspect of news that is not well covered online which is my local (down to what happens on my street) news.

The paper is not dead, nor will it be for the forseeable future, but the industry is undergoing (albeit more quietly) the same changes as the other major media - music and tv/film, and they need to find a new business model that can compete with the technological and revenue changes of the day.

The metro has a readership of over 400,000 of Toronto's 20-35 (read disposable income) population. This is the kind of targeted marketing that Google is milking vast VC on right now. National bloatpapers may have had their day but the print-paper industry is far from dead. They just need to wake up.

Disclaimer: I have nothing to do with any news dissemination organ, be it online, tree-based or otherwise

Maybe I'm really old but...

[AFairlyNormalPerson]

Maybe I'm really old but I thought RADIO was killing newspapers.

And while I'm at it, I thought video was killing the radio.

Wouldn't that mean that the internet is killing the video star?

I've got the solution:

[mblase]

A real e-book.

Not those digital books you read on your palm computer while you're driving around, though. I'm talking about a real digital paperback-type gadget similar to the Guide from the latest "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" movie, that closes up to an 8-by-6 box when you're not using it and opens up to two large LCD screens when you do.

Make them B&W and low-res, I don't care. Just make them large enough to read text and the occasional diagram, add a CF/SD/Memory Stick reader in the side, and--here's the important thing--an iPod-like dock connector that will automatically download the latest news, magazines, books, whatever I'm subscribed to when I plug it into the dock just before I go to work. Think AvantGo, or text-only podcasts, or full-text RSS feeds, whatever you like. The important thing is that sixty seconds later, I'm ready to go with the latest from the New York Times, or Wired, or Forbes or Slashdot or Drudge or anything else I'd like to read on the subway.

This is the thing that will make digital text content a success--an iPod for news, novels, art, textbooks (students would LOVE these things to replace paper texts), weblogs, whatever you want to read online when you have to be offline. Palm computers' screens are too small to display very much text; laptops have keyboards you don't need while reading; tablet PCs are too expensive.

If I could buy a truly digital book, the size of a DVD box with a large easy-to-read screen and a no-brainer interface--just open it and it turns on, press one button to flip pages, another to switch books--I'd buy it in a second. But you'd sell it to consumers by offering them free (or cheap) offline web news, blogs, articles, whatever. If we'll pay $0.99 apiece for songs from iTunes, why not charge $0.99 a day for daily news in your hands without having to unfold an entire laptop or throw away the newspaper when you're done?

Re:I've got the solution:

[assassinator42]

That's too expensive, first. Second, seems like a pretty good idea otherwise. Although I don't like the dock, have it sync via wifi/cellular. And how about Minority Report style newspaper? Same form as today's papers, only electronic. I like the DVD case size better though.

Newspaper's Main Problem: The Credibility Gap

[Anonymous Coward]

The MSM has a huge problem of their own making. They have developed a Credibility Gap. Even the MSM has started to notice.
Between Jayson Blair, The Hutton Report, Rathergate, Mike Wallace at the gun control rally, etc. etc. and their willful omissions (to cite merely one of many omissions) I have stopped believing what the MSM is reporting. It is clear that the MSM has a not-so-hidden agenda. They used to be called "reporters." Now they aren't willing to simply report, they must champion a cause.

Lessons from Vietnam: The Credibility Gap

The MSM* was permanently changed by the Vietnam war and its aftermath, including the Watergate scandal and the Nixon impeachment. [As commenter Jon Ravin points out in the interest of accuracy, Nixon was never actually impeached, but resigned when his impeachment became inevitable.] The experiences of that time explain much of the agenda journalism of the MSM today, but I would submit that they have not only forgotten the most crucial lesson from Vietnam, but their failure to remember will ultimately destroy them as a uniquely important and powerful force in our society.

First some history; During the years of the troop escalation in Vietnam, ultimately topping out at over 550,000 American military personal, the Pentagon and the White House, still fighting the last war in terms of Public Relations, continually measured our success in the war by pointing to "body counts". Using an outdated model of war in which the media play the role of conveyors of information controlled by the Pentagon and the administration, daily body counts of enemy combatants were touted as evidence, in the infamous words of General Westmoreland, that we could see "the light at the end of the tunnel." From 1965 on, we were, according to the daily body counts, winning the Vietnam war. When the Tet offensive took place in January of 1968, the reason the public was so shocked and ready to see our military victory as a defeat was that the expectations of victory "right around the corner" were crushed. We never knew that the North Vietnamese, post-Tet, were ready to sue for peace; all we knew was that an enemy who was supposedly being decimated was able to launch a major offensive. The conclusion was that either our military and the administration were incompetent, or that they had been lying to us all along. This lead to the "Credibility Gap". No longer would our press, feeling with some justification that they had been used and lied to, allow themselves to be so gullible. From this point on , the press almost universally saw themselves in an adversarial role against the military and the Executive branch of government.

It is important to note that the Pentagon and White House were only doing what had always been done in war time. The purpose of news in war time is to support the morale of the home front and to that end, propaganda has always been an important aspect of warfare. Unfortunately for the Johnson and Nixon administrations, while the nature of war hadn't really changed, the nature of our media had. We had close to real time news emanating from the battlefields of Vietnam. Reporters could see that there were attacks not being reported, injuries and deaths of Americans being swept under the rug, and constant reports of impending victory which were easily refuted.

This is extremely relevant to our war effort today. The military realizes that we are fighting a new kind of war, which includes a significant public relations aspect on the home front. The MSM does not yet recognize that fact; they are still fighting the last war.

We are winning in Iraq and have been for some time. When

Hmm..could people be tired of the SLANTED news??

[Anonymous Coward]

The real reason they don't want to mention, is that people are starting to catch on to the severe liberal slant that is now permating the NEWS part of journalism. It used to be you could express any views you wanted to in editorial content, but the new was "just the facts"...now jouranlists all feel free to slant the facts, report only the facts they think fit their view(usually liberal) of the world etc. The public sees right through this deliberate distortion of what used to be considered respectible news content.

Here is some information from a recent GALLOP Poll that illustrates this well:
Public trust in newspapers and television news continued to decline in Gallup's annual survey of "public confidence in major institutions" in the United States, reaching an all-time low this year.

        Those having a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in newspapers dipped from 30% to 28% in one year, the same total for television. The previous low for newspapers was 29% in 1994. Since 2000, confidence in newspapers has declined from 37% to 28%, and TV from 36% to 28%, according to the poll.>

Let's see. We had Dan Rather fall for forged documents, and who to this day cannot face these facts and still insists the story about BUSH in the TANG is true. We had the MSM obssess on Bush's TANG while ignoring the Swiftboat Vets for months. We had Eason Jordan and Linda Foley repeat claims that our brave military men and women, who are sacrificing life and limb every day to protect us from Islamic fanatics, target journalists. We had reports on claims by terrorists regarding the desecration of the Koran at GITMO, without any mention of the desecration perpetrated by the terrorists themselves.....

I could go on and on, it is a daily event in the MSM with their propaganda. Are we surprised they are out of favor? Not one bit.

The decline is well documented in this book by a former CBS reporter: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0009K762G/104-50 66573-9306332?v=glance&n=283155&s=books&v=glance

And documented every day here on this media watchdog blog:
http://newsbusters.org/

Until the mainstream media confronts this REALITY that they currenty right off as just being the "perception" of conservatives, they will continue to loose readers and money.

not a lot of news

[ducomputergeek]

I am considering dropping daily delivery and just getting the sunday editions for coupons of the local St. Louis Post-Dispatch. I can read the articles online that I want, but over all there isn't a lot of news. The main section I read is the business and sports during the baseball season.

THey have been cutting the number of stock listings and most of their news they get from other sources. Plus we get the Wall Street Journal at work so I am less tempted to even order that publiction.

Epic 2014

[Headcase88]

Haven't seen this flash? You should... it's fun to watch.

Death for some...

[fireboy1919]

I see a transition, not a death.

I live in Orlando, Florida. The local newspaper is called the Orlando Sentinel, a.k.a. the Slantinel. Their agenda-pushing sometimes makes our mud-slinging presidential candidates seem mild. In an internet full of freedom of choice, the Sentinel will most likely lose. People read it just because it's really the only local paper we've got.

When everyone gets all their written news online, it'll die because it's so bad. I doubt it will be the only paper like this, and I doubt it'll die willingly and quietly for that matter. I expect it'll be fairly ugly. Lots of "the internet can rape your children, steal your soul, and cause you to gain 50 pounds" type stories.

Re:Death for some...

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

I'm in that region too. The Slantinel is just one of many Tribune-owned fish-wrappers. I used to get it at least on Sundays for the coupons, but it wasn't even worth it for that.

The future for newspaper publishers is the addfolios like Car Shopper and personal ads. Stuff that isn't out of date before it's even published.

Newspapers can ever hope to be "timely" when the on-line medium's publish date is "right the fuck now" and the printed medias is "sometime tomorrow morning.

They're just lucky that TV and Radio didn't kill them first.

Re:Death for some...

[plover]

The thing is, with the loss of local diversity the world will end up with just a few giant news organizations, and there won't be anyone left to investigate the local news. Sure, much of their news is already syndicated so you're already reading a lot of national feeds, but if the Slantinel goes away, who is going to report any local news at all? Do you think Reuters will hire a full-time Orlando reporter? The Associated Press?

They may be slanted but at least they're focused on news that's important to you. (And while they exist, you can at least pretend that someday they might investigate Hollings for his Mouske-ties.)

Re:Death for some...

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in NYC and refuse to buy any of the bias rags locally printed here. I read the Washington Post online and would pay a subscription fee to access it's entire library. Instead I currently purchase articles in it's archives.

Re:Death for some...

[eric76]

It got po'ed at the Amarillo newspaper a little over 10 years ago and haven't subscribed since.

Their problem is that they hardly cover any college sports besides Texas Tech.

For example, one year, Texas A&M won the NWIT (National Women's Invitational Tournament) post-season basketball tournament held in Amarillo. The Amarillo paper didn't seem to think that news was worth the effort to cover since they didn't report it until a few days later. From the coverage, you would have thought that Notre Dame won since they got a full page or more the morning after the end of the tournament.

Re:Death for some...

[randyest]

if the Slantinel goes away, who is going to report any local news at all? Do you think Reuters will hire a full-time Orlando reporter? The Associated Press?

Well, I like to think it will be hordes of bloggers reaping micropayments and publishing their stories to cooperative social-filtering and validation systems online.

But who knows? Nature (and the market) abhors a vacuum.

Re:Death for some...

[cbr2702]

Perhaps people would go to local blogs for the information?

Re:Death for some...

[Danger Stevens]

Then some new wave of local news bloggers will form a syndicate that borrows from blogging and wiki technologies. There will be a demand for a single site that can link you to people reporting on news in your area and that demand will be filled.

It's not hard to imagine that someone would report local news as a hobby and as a community service and even make some money by having their local hardware store sponsor them. The golden rule in blogging is to find a niche and dominate it, so this news form would actually be quite attractive to many bloggers. Local news won't die, not as long as hosting is cheap and ads are easy to come by.

Re:Death for some...

[Zacha]

Most bloggers aren't paid. So they won't blog when they can't afford it, making news irregular. And Wikis lack attribution.

They're not subsitutes for a local paper.

Re:Death for some...

[(trb001)]

They may be slanted but at least they're focused on news that's important to you.

Perhaps it's different in Orlando, but where I live (Centreville, Va) we have the Washington Post for most of our news, but the locality also distributes the Centreville Times. The Times doesn't even attempt to capture any national news (it might occasionally touch on metro news), it's objective is to keep us up on what's going on in our local neighborhoods. Even if most print publications go bankrupt, I doubt the Times would be affected...plenty of people buy ad space specifically because it's a way of reaching the locals.

--trb

Re:Death for some...

[Anonymous Coward]

so... let me get this straight. You've decided not to read a local newspaper because they didn't cover *ENOUGH* grown men and women chasing a ball around in a fixed arena?

It appears that you--not they--have the problem.

Re:Death for some...

[robertjw]

The thing is, with the loss of local diversity the world will end up with just a few giant news organizations, and there won't be anyone left to investigate the local news.

Here's a newsflash. This has already happened. Many newspapers in the US are owned by big companies that own multiple papers. Same thing with radio stations. I live in Colorado and even the two big Denver papers, The Denver Post and The Rocky Mountain News, are owned by the same company. I hope that the death of the newspaper will result in the creation of some local news websites that will increase the diversity of our news.

Re:Death for some...

[Anonymous Coward]

well the internet has caused children to be raped, souls to be stolen, and innumerable wow players have gained 50 pounds so...

Serves em Right

[Anonymous Coward]

Newspapers are Killing Trees

Parent more honest than the NYT

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you just unambiguously informed me that your comment was an opinion. The NYT frequently puts their opinions on the front page and tries to pass them off a news stories.

Even Mr. BlueOregon notices.

The truth is...

[Anonymous Coward]

/. is killing the newspaper.

And let us say...

[biraneto2]

Rest in peace! Natural evolution at its best.

Bad moderators, bad...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a link to a Alien and Sedition Acts cite

They are both small Acts, appearing as passed on the same pages. Here follows a snippet of the Seditions Act as it may acknowledge the parent poster;

SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That if any person shall write, print, utter or publish, or shall cause or procure to be written, printed, uttered or publishing, or shall knowingly and willingly assist or aid in writing, printing, uttering or publishing any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States, with intent to defame the said government, or either house of the said Congress, or the said President, or to bring them, or either of them, into contempt or disrepute; or to excite against them, or either or any of them, the hatred of the good people of the United States, or to excite any unlawful combinations therein, for opposing or resisting any law of the United States, or any act of the President of the United States, done in pursuance of any such law, or of the powers in him vested by the constitution of the United States, or to resist, oppose, or defeat any such law or act, or to aid, encourage or abet any hostile designs of any foreign nation against the United States, their people or government, then such person, being thereof convicted before any court of the United States having jurisdiction thereof, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding two thousand dollars, and by imprisonment not exceeding two years.

SEC. 3. And be it further enacted, and declared, That if any person shall be prosecuted under this act, for the writing or publishing any libel aforesaid, it shall be lawful for the defendant, upon the trial of the cause, to give in evidence in his defence, the truth of the matter contained in the publication charged as a libel. And the jury who shall try the cause, shall have a right to determine the law and the fact, under the direction of the court, as in other cases.

Fluid parts of the act are in bold, as applicable to the parent poster thoughts. If it weren't for the Bill of Rights supplanting part of this, then it would be grave to speak an truth of the United States because such would cause defame and the "good people" would make appropriations of remedy. Is it good to say that "good people" could be defined by the United States as them not having been convicted of misdemeanor or crime, or better to say that there is not defined a "good people" and implying an ommitted "bad people", all by the United States? This is rancid!

I've come across the text on Benjamin Franklin's grandson, not nephew, running the family printing press and as editor (unlike Slashdot Editors and the bad moderators). The Alien and Seditions Act was apparently passed after the nephew attended a secret meeting of Senate to repay Brittain for damages incurred at the Revolutionary War for Independence, thereby causing the people (or good people) just that which was not to be tolerated in the Alien and Seditions Act. Link here, and to quote;

According to the Tennessee Laws (1715-1320, vol. II, p. 774), in the 1794 Jay Treaty, the United States agreed to pay 600,000 pounds sterling to King George III, as reparations for the American revolution.

So what can I say; Patriot Act is pale in comparison to this, but this could mean that Patriot Act is nessary because the United States re-organized after every war and was made new, in secret just as the earlier. Naturalization Act; 14th amendment; all is questionable because it ignores the states organically reproducing Citizens as opposed to the manufactured citizens that raise their right hand and heil a flag.

Not murder, suicide

[argStyopa]

Like any number of administrations I can name, newspapers had a near monopoly on the reportage of news. For the longest time it was them or hearsay. Then TV came along and didn't really compete for the depth of serious reporting.

Yet today's newspapers are about litte more then poorly-disguised polemic and not-so-subtle agenda driven editorials masked as news reporting.

Know why Fox news and the talk radio stations are eating your lunch? Because when you become so self-satisfied and smug, people are revolted by it, and driven to other sources.

Welcome to capitalism, biatch.

BBC, Anti-Semitic and Proud

[Anonymous Coward]

I read BBC news online because its news seems straightforward and mostly unbiased.

Please, the BBC is notoriously Anti-Semitic. The BBC reporting crying when Arafat died is merely one example.
You should take a look at Biased BBC.

Re:BBC, Anti-Semitic and Proud

[Anonymous Coward]

Um. Are you asserting that no one cried when Arafat died?

Good

[nate nice]

Now they can feed us more lies faster.

But wouldn't you assume newspapers, with their might and "insight" into the news, would have been on top of this right from the start. I mean, they had every advantage.

Hurts. Hurts, real bad. Ramoana? Is that you Ramoana?

Peiper: Yes, please here me out!.. It's not really my problem...we were bitten...by a snake in the grass!! It's evilC:\ C:\ C:\++

But seriously folks, I do read the Times when I see one lying around.

Gonk!

News Flash!

[pete-classic]

Internet is Killing the Newspaper

Buggy whip manufacturers unavailable for comment.

-Peter

Evolution

[Da3vid]

All things change. I think the Internet is a better medium for large scale information. At any rate, on a large scale, information is moving across the world. If anything embodies globalization, its the internet, and what better way to get news about the globe? However, I think that local newspaper may still survive. While they could certainly go to an online medium as well to save on distribution costs, they don't stand to gain as much as a larger scale news society.

Can you imagine receiving a daily Slashdot mailing in your mailbox at home? Ridiculous

-Da3vid-

Internet advertising

[RealRav]

Advertising on the internet needs to be reevaluated. Currently, companies only get paid for a click-through, but this is not an accurate measurement of the value of the advertisement. When an ad is placed in a newspaper they get paid for the spot, not by the number of people who reply. Tv is the same way. Why should the internet be any different. IMHO internet advertising is under paid. But this will change as it becomes the dominant form of advertising.

Rav

Letting themselves die

[Anonymous Coward]

The internet isn't "killing" newspapers so much as the newspapers are not doing anything to adapt.
They, like the MPAA/RIAA are unwilling to change with the times and look ahead to the vast potential of the internet. At this crucial time they should be finding ways of diversifying and expanding their approach to business, instead they are busy bitching about the changes. (Heh it seems corporations act a lot more like people than I imagined)

The only things newspapers have over the internet is portability and the ability to have an archival copy that can't be modified.

hey, everyone else is doin' it

[nerdonamotorcycle]

I'm surprised they're not finding some way to blame internet piracy.

CommonTimes is skilling internet news

[reifman]

Social newsmarking is the next big thing.

I think you meant XYZ affair, or as well.

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad the moderators can't be expunged from honest discussions. Source. I thought it was a great read into a horror novel. No different than todays USA unPatriotic Act.

The first victim of the Aliens and Sedition Act was Matthew Lyon of Vermont. Lyon's "crime" was a statement made in a letter published in a Vermont newspaper. Lyon said that with the federal executive "...every consideration of the public welfare is swallowed up in a continual grasp for power, and unbound thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation, and self avarice." Lyon was arrested and brought before Supreme Court Justice Patterson where he was found guilty of sedition. He was sentenced to four months in prison and fined $1,000. His property was auctioned off to pay his fine. Not only was Lyon found guilty of sedition, so was the newspaper publisher who printed his article. (So much for the 1st Amendment and freedom of the press.) Liberty lasted eleven years before the federal government violated the Constitution.

Thomas Cooper was the second man convicted of violating the Alien and Sedition Act. His "crime" was speaking out in defense of another man, Jonathan Robbins, who was also accused of violating the law. Cooper declared the law to be "...without precedent, without law and against mercy." Cooper received no mercy. He was also sentenced to four months, and his home, lands and property were seized to satisfy the $1,000 fine.

When the fourth lawbreaker, James T. Callender was hauled into the Supreme Court and faced Justice Chase, his lawyers raised the question of the legality of the law, which obviously violated the Bill of Rights. Chase refused to listen to their legal argument and threw out the briefs they had filed with the court, chastising the lawyers for bringing such a pathetic argument into court. They left the courthouse in disgust, leaving their client to the mercy of Chase. Chase showed none. Four months and $1,000.

Publishers are killing the newspaper

[mmmuttly]

I read the paper regularly from 1974 till about 2000 For starters, the Chicago Tribune twice endorsed George Bush would for president. That lack of common sense makes anything else they might write about highly suspect. I get sad when I think of the number of trees that died to print 26yrs worth of sports sections that I threw in the recycling bin without looking at. Most of the crap that gets reported on is of no interest to me. Too often the stories are about stuff that doesn't matter - questionable trends, celebrity blather and/or is some thinly veiled gushing over an advertiser's upcoming event. Their new lite versions of the paper are even more vacuous and stupid than the regular version. Third, the stuff that does interest me has been watered down for a general audience to the point that what they are saying is is no longer informative or engaging. I would buy the paper just for the daily comics, but they are so afraid of offending someone that all they publish now is pablum. I can catch Dilbert & Doonebury online and will never have to waste another second passing over the Garfield mediocrity that the comics page has sunk to. Fifth, I used to deal with their production dept and was treated so shabbily that I wouldn't buy their rag anymore even if it was quality. Mass media can't die fast enough to suit me.

Internet killed...

[404notfound]

... the newspaper star?

Down with the corrupt media

[hotarugari]

All the people that wanted to "mind control" the public by buying out the media are well deserving of losing out in the long run.

That and thier own lack of desire to remain a competitive (and intelligent) source of news has really pushed them away from the public consumer.

Re:Is the newspaper still a practical business mod

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree about the downfall of quality.

I'm a news junkie, but I haven't bought a single newspaper in recent history. The internet more then provides numerous news sources. Limitless really. The problem?
Associated press and the likes!
See a small story on cnn? want to know more? go to NBC or CBS, even BBC. Same story word by word. Original content is dying by syndicated death. Lesser publications are comprised of 90% newswire source feeds these days. Good example is poorly performing sports teams. alomst every sports news source carries the exact same blurb on the same day.
Associated press is hardly the enemy here, but it makes you wonder. How little effort can I put into a news website without really providing any original content? Slashdot, or fark, or digg are really content free, yet very usefull for what they do. But content is time consuming, and thus expensive. How long before we have reference loop with no content? example:

"Report: slashdot.com thinks it's the bestest" link to digg.com, reported at fark.com

click

"fark.com reports that slashdot.com thinks it's the greatest" link to slashdot.com, reported at digg.com

click

"We are the best!, according to fark.com" link to fark.com, reported at slashdot.com.

and so on.

Can't trust the papers...

[sinewalker]

Why does "mainstream media" think blogging is such a huge hit? It's not that Internet is immediate, or that anyone can do it (which has big down-sides as well as it's egalitarian advantages). It is simply that people everywhere are fed-up with WWII-era propagandists telling us what to believe and have started researching it for themselves.

This is the Information Revolution: the Revolution is greatly improved access to the information. People are more educated now than they were 50 or even 20 years ago and can make informed judgements. They don't need some "journalist" to do it for them. This is quite appart form the fact that today's journalism is extremely poor compared to yester-year's.

I don't buy papers because I know that I can't trust them to bring me news in an unbiased, non-politically or commercially influenced fashion, or full of Tabloid rubbish like British newspapers. I accept the risk that the news I learn via the Net can be from the "uninformed" masses and mitigate this by using many sources so I can judge for myself where the "truth" may lay.

I won't even read over people's shoulders anymore.

For at least the last 10 years, newspapers have been good for only one thing: the ink used in newspaper presses is fantastic for removing streaks and smudges from my computer monitor!

You only need one

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the media report the exact same news, with the exact same slant. You don't really think that all the different newspaper/TV/radio/etc. reporters each independently came up with a word like "gravitas" on the exact same day?

Since they won't produce anything unique, they should all just merge together into the "Clinton Memorial Super Station News Department", where they can get together and moan about the "evil Republican SUV's" causing "Global Warming" on Mars, which is going to cause New York City to freeze over, thus releasing the wolves who will eat us all! All caused because Bush "stole" the election by not changing the laws after the fact, allowing for recounting the Florida ballots over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, using the unique criteria defined by the independent and impartial Democrat Party, until Algore finally won. Too bad that none of the newspapers could get the ballots to come out right with their numerous recounts either. Why, Bush even caused the Civil War because he wanted to take the oil from the Mexicans! And he caused the fall of Rome, by secretly flying an Airbus to Australia, because he wanted to build an olive oil pipeline from China to Brazil! It must be true, because Michael Moore said so!

Googlezon

[xyphor]

I personally welcome our new Googlezon overlords.

What's Really Killing the Newspaper

[Anonymous Coward]

What's really killing newspapers is...

1) An inability for most journalists to tell the truth.

2) An inability for most newspapers to confine their
      editorial opinions to the "opinions" page as oppossed
      to trying to pass off "news" stories which are just
      thinly guised editorials (see also, problem 1).

3) The incredibly extremist left wing bias of most
      newspapers which doesn't sit well with most Americans
      who mostly run the gamet from moderate to very
      conservative.

4) The Internet, which is drawing away readers to
      alternative news sources because of problems 1
      through 3 listed above.

Internet is Killing the Newspaper. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

. . . and it's saving the trees.

Re:Internet is Killing the Newspaper. . .

[crimperman]

. . . and it's saving the trees.

Newsprint doesn't contain as much tree as it used to. In the UK at least newspaper publishers are required by law to ensure that their newsprint in made of a minimum of 65% recycled fibre - this goes up to 70% on 1 Jan 2006.

Good riddance

[Heretik]

Newspapers are the most blatantly wasteful thing. It'd be justified if they weren't horribly inferior to electronic media in every single way - but they are.

Re:Good riddance

[OregonComputerSoluti]

"Newspapers are the most blatantly wasteful thing. It'd be justified if they weren't horribly inferior to electronic media in every single way - but they are."

Not necessarily true... At my house, the printed newspaper still has a couple of purposes: 1) Birdcage liners (we own 2 scarlet macaws, and 1 blue & gold macaw -- they take a LOT of paper), 2) firestarting material (we have a woodburning stove as our ONLY heat, by choice, and newspaper is essential for this -- it is also useful for lighting campfires, etc.), and 3) the funnies -- you still get more and better funnies from a good newspaper than you can online at sites such as www.comics.com

Those points aside, however, I do agree that print media is dying out -- and this is a good thing. I love the immediacy and interactivity of online electronic media. I can search for and find things of relevance to me, and not waste my time reading news that is already outdated by the time it arrives, or waiting through minutes of random local crap for the 1 or 2 items of significance (which you have to do with TV-news).

And I must admit that even though I DO read all of my news online, I still think print media is useful for SOME things... Books are still far better on paper than electronically, and some print magazines still do a decent job of providing what I want (although this is mainly because the magazines I read do not all provide thier content online -- if they did, I would likely get it there, and never buy another print-copy)!

This just in

[Anonymous Coward]

newspapers son magazine will avenge death.

no really things come and go.

newspapers will not be fully dead same as with radio.
theres a need for it at some level.

Re:Newspaper's Main Problem: *MOD PARENT UP*

[furry_wookie]

Man...modding this as flamebait is pretty unfair. Even if you don't agree with the politics, it is at least a rare thoughtfully written comment which is rare enough as it is on slashdot.

Give it a bone, mod it up a point or 2 so someone might actually read it and maybe challenge their brains for a few seconds.

I do, but its not my laptop...

[crovira]

There's something very satisfying about hearing the crunch as I swat a fly that's landed on somebody's head. (Ah the smell of blood and the crunch of cartilage as I land one on somebody's nose just after the fly landed. :-)

Re: The trend matters - they'll start charging $$

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it really matter?

Short answer: yes it does matter.

Long answer: the only reason why we have free online news is that everybody is offering it for free. Everybody is doing that because they have other sources of revenue. What this article is saying is that those sources of revenue are under attack from free online news. If the economics don't work out, they'll start charging for reading online.

If the economics don't work for the industry, the industry will start to move towards charging for reading the news. That will be the effect so you will not have online free online news as you do right now and then it *will* matter.

We are already seeing that in the NY Times. I think that this will be the trend.

Re:What's Really Killing the Newspaper *MOD UP*

[furry_wookie]

MOD THIS UP.

This pretty much sum's it all up....good job at boiling pretty much all the other comments down to a few bullet points.

Could you help me with my next presentation to the CIO??? :)

Don't blame the Internet, blame the Invisible Hand

[leereyno]

I'm not surprised that the circulation of most newspapers is going down. What is happening is that there are too many liberal reporters and editors chasing after too few liberal readers. It isn't that anyone is intentionally "punishing" these papers, rather this is simply supply and demand. The invisible hand strikes again. There is less demand for liberal news and more demand for conservative news. Case in point, the circulation boom currently being enjoyed by the Washington Times:

http://www.washtimes.com/business/20050518-120247- 7729r.htm

Another example is Fox news, which currently pulls more viewers than CNN and MSNBC put together. If this were a technology issue created by the internet, you wouldn't be seeing a shift from liberal television outlets to a conservative one, instead you'd see an overall shift AWAY from television as a news source.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/columnist/mediamix/20 04-07-25-media-mix_x.htm
http://www.jsonline.com/enter/tvradio/apr03/133295 .asp
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTI CLE_ID=43120

The premiere liberal radio network, Air America, is also doing badly. In Washington DC its listener share is actually so low that it can't even be detected according to the Arbitron rating service:

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTI CLE_ID=46954

The issue here is not one of technology, but ideology. This country is, day by day, moving further and further away from the left and closer to the right. A conservative person is not going to choose news presented with a liberal bent to it when the same information is available with a conservative bent. The liberal media is basically selling the ideological equivalent of buggy whips. Each year there are fewer and fewer customers to sell their wares to. As a consequence the entire liberal media industry is suffering as a whole. The plight of the liberal newspaper business is just one aspect of this.

Lee

Dump "Blog" as a buzzword

[Chatmag]

How many times a day is the word "blog" used on TV, radio, and in newspapers? Sending your audience to the "competition" is not a good business model.

/action goes off to finish today's blog entry.

Litigate?

[xixax]

The world gravitates toward efficiency. Instant delivery, little cost, up-to-date. How can newspapers compete?
Have the laws changed to criminalise the technology and their customer base? Nah... it'd never happen...

Whatever

[Eli Gottlieb]

I really don't care, because my local paper seems to be doing fine. As long as they supply local news and a healthy angle on national/international affairs (they are one of the most "balanced" (ie, by my view) papers I've read) and I can read the New York Times online (it sucks that they're restricting access to columns to paying customers now, but what the fuck), I am happy with the state of newspapers.

Oh, and did anyone else see the Foxtrot for October 31, 2005? Digg had a story on it...

Typo, my bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

Typo, my bad.
The BBC reporter crying when Arafat died is merely one example.

internet will kill the video star.....

[marx2002]

there is more to come and i hope no patents will stop it. cu there http://www.poptix.net/funny/videostar.swf

A death in the media

[Tesral]

It wasn't murder, it was suicide.

I was a long time newspaper reader. I picked up the habit when I was a paperboy, and it continued throughout my life. About ten years ago I realized that the only thing I was reading anymore was the comics and the feature page. The rest of the paper was pure dreck.

The local papers lost a reader that day. And it wasn't TV, it wasn't the Internet, it was purely a case of the quality of the product had dropped below my tolerance point.

I have since picked up several Internet sites as news sources, I prefer several for a more balanced view, and funny, but none are run by papers.

Sad but True?

[Hosiah]

I know for me, the internet is killing newspapers, and magazines, too, for that matter. The only thing I still do is read the papers I get for free (your local free-press Cityview-type papers), mainly because I can't take the internet with me to the john. But I really miss the Scientific American, Smithsonian, and US News & World Report I used to subscribe to. I simply didn't renew them when I moved, and it makes no sense to get them now, because I can see it all for free online. But I sometimes miss having those handsome rags lined up on the coffee table.

Come to that, the internet is trumping *every* other media source when it comes to raw news. I can't Google search for related terms on my cable box. I can't run a Truth-or-Fiction fact check on a radio. People will tell me something they saw in the paper, and I'll say, "Oh, yeah, that was on [insert one of 20 news-sites here] yesterday!" In the age of RSS-feeds, plus a shell script I wrote to scrape them all, it's getting to be the next best thing to being psychic. In fact, even my library card usage is down - but I've downloaded and hoarded a slew of E-books!

Good Riddance

[Master of Transhuman]

Given the quality of coverage of news, they deserve to go away. Start with the New York Times, a shill for the CIA and whoever is in power at the moment.

Only time I look at a paper now is if it's laying on my BART seat - or I'm at the laundry without a book to read.

Now if only we could get rid of broadcast news as easily...starting with the neocon pitbulls at Fox.

Goodbye Newspaper

[Anonymous Coward]

There was already a really good article all about this called Goodbye Newspaper

The internet didnt kill the newspapers

[Stanneh]

newspapers have killed themselfs all they had to do was report the truth blogging is now our only source of facts.

Oh Ye, Oh Ye

[DrSkwid]

Newspapers killing town cryers!!
Cryers not needed any more.
Oh ye, oh ye.

Newspapers are killing themselves.

[Anonymous Coward]

Newspapers, in their desire to cut costs, have radically reduced the amount of original content. My latest local Sunday paper contained about 2/3 ads and had a front page section with five locally (local staff) written stories and 29 stories written by an assortment of associated press and other newspapers. The locally written stories also contain factual errors as well as grammatical errors. The quantity and quality of the newspaper content has declined a lot.

This decline in stories that are written locally and relevant makes it much less likely that I will continue subscribing. There is a viscous cycle occurring; publishers cut costs by reducing quality/quantity of local news; circulation declines; publishers are forced to cut costs. It is no longer good enough to make some profit; the big corporations owning newspapers often focus on increasing profit margins in order to look better to investors.

The newspaper industry has committed suicide; the body has not yet stopped breathing.

the internet is killing the newspaper?

[SolusSD]

good.

clearly more informed

[idlake]

On-line, after reading self-aggrandizing, propagandistic, and trashy rags like the New York Times and the Washington Post, people at least have an opportunity they never have with paper: they may stumble upon real news.

Re:Don't blame the Internet, blame the Invisible H

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that we have "conservative" newspapers to appeal to idelogical masses is hardly a good thing, either for democracy or journalism in general.

Re:To make matters worse, ...

[kbielefe]

Critical of politicians, yes. Interesting, no. But that's not just limited to newspapers. Case in point: a couple of weeks ago presidents Bush and Abbas held a joint press conference at the White House to announce their roadmap for Palestine. Questions from the Palestian press were actually insightful and related to the topic at hand. Every single question from the American press was completely off topic (I know -- I watched the entire press conference). The story was buried 3 links deep on cnn.com, only had one paragraph related to Palestine, and the remainder of the article was about how President Bush "tried to keep the discussion away from the CIA leak and Harriet Miers" and repeated the same tired "news" they had been reporting for weeks. I lost count of the number of days I saw or heard the headline that it is possible that indictments will be announced as early as the next day.

Come on, news is supposed to be new. Everything I cared to know about the Plame case I already knew way back in July. Mr. Libby's indictment was news on the day it happened. If Mr. Rove is indicted, then it will be news on the day it happens. Mrs. Meirs nomination was news the day it happened and the day she withdrew. The 23 days in between, all the media reported was that liberals still don't like her and conservatives still aren't exactly elated about her either.

The great thing about the internet isn't blogs and online versions of TV and newspapers, it is the unprecedented access we have to raw data. I regularly visit whitehouse.gov, house.gov, senate.gov, supremecourtus.gov, federal and state democrat and republican party sites, and the personal pages of my federal and state representatives, senators, governor, and current political candidates. I also read the minutes of my local town council and school board meetings. Sure, a lot of those sites are obviously heavily biased, but at least I'm getting the biased opinions directly from the source. My entertainment, sports, and weather news also comes from more direct sources, like mailing lists from local venues.

When I hear about a court decision or a piece of legislation from somewhere, I look up the actual raw text for myself and come to my own conclusions. Whenever possible, I will watch the entire unedited coverage of an event I am interested in or read the transcript instead of relying on the small sound bites the media chooses to present. I didn't have to rely on the press to tell me what was really important to Senator Kerry when he was running for President; I looked up his votes and his sponsored/cosponsored legislation for myself. I know which senators voted against Justice Roberts and why, and which senators are likely to vote against Mr. Alito. The day after Harriet Miers was nominated, I predicted that she wouldn't be appointed. (I should have posted that prediction. For the record, I'm predicting Alito to be confirmed by about 65-35.) It sounds like a lot of work, but it doesn't actually take any more time than I used to spend reading the newspaper, and I'm a lot better informed for the effort.

Yeah, yeah, and...

[Anonymous Coward]

...video killed the radio star. Unless the Buggles have something to say about this, I'm indifferent.

Re:Don't blame the Internet, blame the Invisible H

[leereyno]

The fact that we have "liberal" newspapers to appeal to ideological masses is not a good thing, either for democracy or journalism in general.

Turnabout is fair play.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Re:Don't blame the Internet, blame the Invisible H

[a24061]

Yeah, those corporations that own the newspapers are really out to overthrow capitalism.

well

[JohnLeFucker]

good

multi-modal?

[marsperson]

I regularly read newspapers from the US, the UK, France, Germany, Spain, latin america and Denmark. IT's interesting to see them looking for different formulas to adapt to the challenges of the internet.

Several french newspapers (like Liberation and Le Monde) have tried to specialize their print and web based deliveries in such a way that the print edition offers in depth reports and analisys, while the web based portion is kept up to date with the cutting-edge-now-unfolding stuff. A few spanish papers seem to be following this trend (like El Pais).

I get the impression that danish papers don't really have a strategy, which stikes me as odd since Denmark is one of the most wired countries in the world. A lot of newspapers there seem to see their web presence as a way to publicize their paper and maybe sell a few stories, but there is no overarching strategy.


In the US you see lots of different approaches, like the Wall Street Journal which practically cut itself out of the blogging trend by keeping all of its material under lock and key except to paying subscribers, thereby insuring that their stories aren't linked to, the New York Times wants you to sell your soul to read anything, and Salon has the interesting strategy of making you watch an add to read their stuff. A kind of contract based approach.

I would really like to see a comparative study of the merits and shortcomings of different approaches. I would also like to see studies on how different reader demographics respond to different paper-web mixes.

Columns vs. Windows

[more]

I just love columns in newspapers. I can read about 50 % faster when columns are narrow.

Perhaps it is about the time to invent columns for browsing, too? (No, frames are not the solution)

I want columns with intelligent layout, not overlapping windows.

still subscribe

[thomasa]

I still subscribe to a morning paper. It is easier to read when
I go out to lunch each day. The funnies are all in one place and
the advertisements - inserts - are useful too. Internet advertising
is too in the way. It is hard to read articles without skipping
around the stupid ads. I just don't see any Internet sources that
combine all that in one place plus I can put my coffee on it and no
one will steal it - try that with a laptop.

Re:Hmm..could people be tired of the SLANTED news?

[AussieVamp2]

Me, I'd say, that if I had a cent for every left wing billionaire media baron, I don't think I'd be buying very much. :)

Newspapers killed themselves.

[Shivetya]

When the reporters and staff at the newspapers forgot the difference between an editorial and factual reporting. It didn't take long for the readers to catch on as they could compare what they read to what they saw and heard on radio and TV.

Consolidation also did not help with competing papers buying each other up only to shut the other down.

My local paper (Atlanta Journal Constitution) has veered so far from factual reporting that you can essentially skip the entire A section (front page) and go to the Business section or Sports section for factual information. Unless just reprinting one of the major's services the reporting is not only sloppy but horribly slanted.

Local newspapers were the first to break big stories like Cobb's "evolution labels" or their notebook computer swindle. The AJC only found out after reading the local papers. Simple reason is because the AJC stopped being about news and turned into an agenda driven rag.

People now have many outlets for news on both the net and tv that they don't are no longer trapped to their newspaper. It wasn't bad when there were competeting papers.

The downside of "Right the F...Now"

[Analogy Man]

The downside is that there are about 4 investigative journalists left that will take the time (sometimes many months) on a project to dredge up facts.

Online or in the paper it is a big circle jerk of NYT reporting on CNN response to article in News Week that was whispered by some un-named "official" on background. Whether it is a pecker tracked dress or the folks keeping us safe from the bad guys commiting treason, the reporting is the same lazy high volume low quality garbage.

Environmentally friendly, too!

[mister_llah]

Aye, such a transition would save countless trees...

It will certainly put some people out of work... but they will just have to transition to a new line of work. There is always some niche to fill...

The only ones I can see getting 'stuck' will be the poor 10-14 year olds... no more papers means no more paper routes :)

It'll be interesting when "Paperboy" is an anachronism :)

Re:Environmentally friendly, too!

[avenj]

Eh, I can assure you it's not just the 10-14 year olds out of a job when print media dies (and it will, but probably not real soon).

I deliver newspapers (motor route, 50 miles, ~250 papers total run -- a relatively small route) seven days a week and I guarantee I'm well out of the 10-14 age range. Most carriers out this way (rural New Hampshire) are at least 30+ -- a few are _much_ older folks (75+) contracting to supplement social security payouts who probably won't live long enough to be out of a job when it comes right down to it. :)

I can't disagree that the death of print media is a Good Thing, though. Frankly, production-related issues (web is faster, trees are good, etc...) are not nearly as important as two very immediate issues: you have to pay a lot of contractors to move paper from point A to point B (finding reliable people dumb/crazy enough to work 7 days a week, driving in any weather, with no vacations can be tough, too) and gas is very expensive these days. It's frankly not very economically smart for the publisher (who either needs to have a distribution contract with somebody else or their own distribution infrastructure), the distributor, or the carriers.

The Internet Killing Newspapers

[Computer_Realist]

Well it seems to me that the Newspaper Industry is having to face what every other industry in the world has to face, a need to evolve and reinvent itself to become sustainable. As they have the majority of reporters, why not use that to become a service and sell these in-depth reports/analysis to the online "News Vendors". I see it that it's not a question of the "Newspapers Dying" but a need to "Evolve". Neil Hodgetts.

newspapers wont become obsolete...

[Anonymous Coward]

...until my cat is able to pee on the internet. I really look forward to that day.

Death of the printed newspaper

[kahrytan]

Resistance is Futile... Adapt to the changing market or risk dying.

Integrate the printed newspaper with an online version. Add a little Adsense code to each article published online. A online pressence insure the survival but also adds the ability to add content. There is still a small need for the printed newspaper because of people who resist the 'pc' but vast majority of people already have a computer.

Another reason for the newspaper fallout

[Peeptophe]

Could it be that people are also realizing there are better news sites than what they can get in a daily paper?

It might also be that people in this age are searching out factual news rather than the biased stories we tend to get from local and giant corporate rags.

In Minneapolis out only choices are between two liberal newspapers that tend to think that newsworthy items are those involving how smoking is bad for your health and how we need to dole out more welfare to the "impoverished" here.

No newspaper today

[stesch]

I don't have any newpaper today. I had to read my news online and watch TV. And there is really serious stuff going on in German politics these days.

You can even get newspapers on sundays. But not on today's holiday "Allerheiligen".

Good Ridance

[jistanidiot]

The newspapers here (both the $$ daily paper and the three free weekly papers) aren't worth the paper they're printed on. The so-called news is either days and weeks old, completely irrelvant to my life, or both.

I do the newsletter for our local social club. If trends continue within 2 years, my newsletter will have circulation equal to that of the local daily paper. It's called having relevant content. The local paper won't even print notices of our meeting or cover events when we have a major figure speak at our meetings. They deserve to go out of business.

Re: Adaptation

[falser]

What The Washington Post did was create a co-publication called "Express" that's targeted at subway commuters:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/express/

It's a small free newspaper, containing only brief news stories. It's got all the sections of a normal paper Top Stories, World, Local, Classifieds, Entertainment, and puzzles. But it's a mini-newspaper about half the physical size of a normal one so it's more suitable for reading on a crowded train. I can usually read everything on my way to work, and solve the Sudoku on my way back (unless I screw up). They have people at every metro stop giving them out to everybody, and I mean everybody. Express papers outnumber all other regular papers in any subway car by at least 20 to 1. They must make more than enough money off ads to cover all the costs because of the high readership. They don't have to compete with online services anytime soon, and it gives WP an audience that wouldn't normally buy a newspaper for their ride to work. There's even a few copycats in the area now so they must be on to something.

It's this kind of adaptation that will make newspapers survive.

Because they just don't, and won't, get it ...

[ubrgeek]

In a past life, I helped two newspapers launch their online efforts, in Texas and in Florida, and trying to get publishers to understand the changing environment was damn near impossible. To make matters worse, papers try to get their print folks to run their Web shops, and the mindset is completely different. Or, when they try to bring in someone with Web experience they think they can pay print salaries. I made the transition from being a reporter to "doing the Web thing" and had to fight for any salary increase, despite bringing in a substantial amount of Web-based revenue - money the paper wouldn't have seen at all without the Website. While the argument taught in J-School is that history shows that no new medium ever killed an old one (TV didn't kill radio, etc.) what it fails to take into account is that a new medium can force an old medium to change so substantially that veterans of that medium may no longer be able to survive. Radio isn't dead because of cable, but satellite radio will kick the hell out of it and force it to change to adapt to new formats and new technologies ....

I loath newspapers

[mrmeval]

I've seen them manipulate the local political and economic scene on many occasions when it was a slightly right leaning paper. Now that it's owned by Gannet it's a left leaning cesspool with even less ethics and more interference in local affairs.

I'm gonna party like it's 1999 when they die, same for the crystal teet as well.

Lets all sing...

[Mysticalfruit]

"Internet killed the newspaper star" ;-)

Ultimately the newspapers will have to adapt or die, period.

"That which doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger..." the newspapers that survive will be the ones that embrance the internet and leverage it.

NIAA

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess it is time for the Newspaper industry to start suing the criminals that *gulp* download their news for free on the Internet.

Not as long as my wife is still alive ...

[Angelox]

Every day, same routine; go to town, buy two different newspapers, only to read what she already saw on TV and on the internet- go figure ...

Re:Newspaper is killing the newspaper

[Anonymous Coward]

Could be good and bad though? Getting factual errors, mistakes, and what not corrected now instead of tomorrow could be useful...

Newspapers loose Ad-revenue...

[sweetnjguy29]

...because people don't read them as much. Companies pay for ads based on exposure...and newspapers don't have as much anymore.

Most people, on some level, have figured out that most news and feature stories are written by the big wire services, such as the AP, Reuters, etc. The news stories sound the same where ever you go...on the TV, the radio, and the paper, the actual *content* is remarkably similar. People have also realized that they can get this generic content, for free, on the internet, on TV, or in free newspapers, such as the Metro.

I disagree that the quality of the reporting has gone down. In fact, I believe it to be remarkably consistant, if not outstanding, in the vast majority of cases. However, there are some notable exceptions...which tarnish the industry.

One pet peeve of mine is that reporters and news commentators often get important "periphiral" facts wrong. For example, I was listening to Michael Savage the other day, and during one of his tirades and he went off on a tangent and said that "Prince Charles never served in the military". This was simply not true...he served in the Royal Navy. I also enjoyed how most of the media failed to mention that Scooter Libby was not only the V-P's Cheif of Staff...but also the President's Assistant!

Folding Media

[Doc Ruby]

Maybe if newspapers printed headlines like "Bush lying about WMDs to send US to war" they'd not only be reporting the truth, doing their job, but also selling more newspapers. Doing their job is a good way to compete with TV news which is the lyingest pack of corporate advertising ever. And it's the only way to compete with the Internet, where people can cross-reference and corroborate newspapers as sources, even when the newspapers are parroting single, interest-conflicted anonymous sources. Of course, if newspapers want to die, they can keep printing boring lies we get on TV anyway.

the truth

[Anonymous Coward]

the only true thing in newspaper print is the tv listing, and that's online already. hopefully people will be more discriminating about what they read and believe but probably not.
forward the revolution.

The...

[Anonymous Coward]

...DNS war (US vs. EU & UN) will fix this problem...

Business Model change, once again

[SharkPork]

It seems to me that so many industries these days are facing changes that require them to change their business model, just a little, or completely.

I work for a newspaper company in the midwest, and it's mostly smaller local newspapers. Ad revenue is where the company makes all its money, the money gained from newspaper purchases is nearly insignificant in comparison.

I don't really know all the numbers, but with the rising costs of fuel and life in general, just hauling in the blank newsprint, and transporting the printed product is costing a lot more these days, plus the increased wages to people who do the work. The whole infrastructure of the company is becoming more and more expensive as time goes on, and it's going to have to change, or else the companies will just shut down.

I've seen the printed-paper newspaper industry in a decline for years, and it will only accelerate. The industry is one of the most skinflintiest businesses around, from my own experience and from talking to others in different areas of the country. "They" just don't seem to care about long-term savings, it's always about the bottom line this second. They'd rather pay for hours and hours of tech work maintaining and repairing old and worn-out equipment than saving money in the long-run by buying newer up-to-date stuff that will work more efficiently and not have so much labor involved in its upkeep.

One thing that I've had in my mind for a long time, is the cool emergence of the "electronic paper" technology. I think it would resurrect the system, if they were able to get a portable version of this paper, like say, in a little scroll tube that the paper can be unrolled from, and set up kiosks where the current paper dispensers are in towns, and people who subscribe get a scrollcase and access to these kiosks to download their content.

Since it's electronic, the stories can be updated more frequently than once every 24 hours, and you can still get the local investigation and analysis of the reporters. The ad revenue can still be there, just like it is on the printed page. Huge money could be saved in the man-hours of printing the page, and of transporting it. The unfortunate side-effectt this has is severely curtailing the income of the guys who work the press itself, but with a weekly summary/sunday paper, they'd still have jobs.

Plus, I don't really see this happening any time soon, but as the people who now are young adults familiar with the internet grow into older adults, they will begin to become more interested in their community news, and want a source to read it from.

Sometime in the next 5-10 years, the printed newspaper industry is going to have to change, but it's going to take a younger, more technologically-aware and less-resistant-to-change cadre of publishing beureaucracy.

Anyway, that's my mindless ramblings for the morning...

commentary from 1969

[Odd John]

This seems to apply to newspapers as much as to TV news. And the decline of both.

''And in the networks' endless pursuit of controversy, we should ask what is the end value--to enlighten or to profit? What is the end result--to inform or to confuse? How does the ongoing exploration for more action, more excitement, more drama, serve our national search for internal peace and stability?

Gresham's law seems to be operating in the network news. Bad news drives out good news. The irrational is more controversial than the rational.

What has this passionate pursuit of ''controversy'' done to the politics of progress through logical compromise, essential to the functioning of a democratic society?

The members of Congress who follow their principles and philosophy quietly in a spirit of compromise are unknown to many Americans--while the loudest and most extreme dissenters on every issue are known to every man in the street.

How many marches and demonstrations would we have if the marchers did not know that the ever-faithful TV cameras would be there to record their antics for the next news show?

In this search for excitement and controversy, has more than equal time gone to that minority of Americans who specialize in attacking the United States, its institutions and its citizens? ''

Vice President Spiro Agnew
Des Moines, Iowa, November 13, 1969

They sold their souls for advertising

[Tangurena]

Newspapers have become little more than advertising vehicles. For an example, look at the Wall Street Journal, about half of what passes for "news" in that paper are press releases from companies.

The urge to look corporate-- sleek, commanding, prudent, yet with just a touch of hubris on your well-cut sleeve-- is an unexpected development in a time of business disgrace.

No normal person writes this Proustian Baloney; this is the sort of thing that a PR agency hack writes and a lazy newspaper sticks in as "news." Paul Graham wrote this essay about press releases posing as news stories.

I expect that the people who pay newspapers to run their "stories" will also be paying congress to prevent bloggers from discussing politics. So that the NoiseMachine can continue to deceive America with their agitprop.

The final blow to local papers will be when local goverments stop posting official notices in those papers. That is where a significant source of income for the papers comes from. Unless you are that newspaper in Newark(?) who is getting something like $100,000/year to publish only news approved by the city council and mayor's office.

Other trends are also working here

[Aceticon]

It's not only the Internet.

The rise of free newspapers (for example, here in Holland you can get them on the train station, 2 types, free of charge) has certainly impacted the traditional model newspapers

Lack of time and the wide availability of entertainment options is also an issue. The little time i have left on the evenings is already split over competing "consumers" (gaming, television, books, friends, family, ...) - reading a daily newspaper would require a very significant slice of the little time available and eat into the time for everything else.

Personally i read a weekly magazine and that's all i have time for. If i use public transportation i'll read a free newspaper, but that's because in that case i'll have 1/2h idle time on my hands and, for the price i don't actually loose nothing if i don't have the time to or feel like reading all of it.

Internet killed the newspaper and....

[Akiba]

Video killed the radio star!

losing the classifieds

[khallow]

Newspapers are losing classified ads, a large revenue source, to the internet. For example, see this story on craigslist. The astonishing thing is that craigslist is providing a huge amount of free service. Apparently, they're only charging on job ads for three (big) markets. And they're making money. I'm ignoring Ebay and other online auction sites too, but these would also cut into the classified ad market in various ways.

No paper newspaper can ultimately compete with this (except by being in an ignored market). And frankly, I doubt an online "newspaper" would bother since the margins on online ads can be driven so low.

Electronic Paper

[Anonymous Coward]

Won't the internet and the newspaper merge someday? With electronic paper, we'll download the news and read the always fresh newspaper as we always did.

Re:Don't blame the Internet, blame the Invisible H

[leereyno]

If you say so.

Wikis lack attribution?

[jotaeleemeese]

There is this thing called passowrd you know?

Wikis do not have to be anonimous in order to be useful.

Re:Wikis lack attribution?

[Zacha]

Oh registration, certainly. The problem is more that you can't be sure which person has written which part of an article.

There are solutions to this: look at the posting history; with few enough contributors, you could highlight each contributor's contributions.

The problem with the former is that the amount of work you have to do to read the news is disproportionate to the casual fashion in which people like to read newspapers, etc; and quite possibly to the value of the news in question. The second solution is problematic when it comes to more aesthetic questions of style.

Wikis can also easily suffer from the non-paid blog problem of people (or, say, the better contributors) not posting when other aspects of their life - usually time or money - prevent it.

The problem of multiple contributors isn't a problem unique to Wikis. Many newspapers will also have articles written by Josie Bloggs, Fred Nurk and APP, for example. Which bits were written by Josie, which by Fred, which by AAP? And which bits were silent, but substantial, rewrites added by their editor, Peter Throbbing?

Al Jazeera....

[jotaeleemeese]

.... regularly is lambasted in the Arab world for its coverage.

They must be doing something right since everybody says they are biased...

Re:Rehashed news among other things kills the pape

[Craig Davison]

Almost everybody here in Wisconsin watches the local news and reads the local papers. They find out about stuff that's consequential to them (ie, parades, weather, local government) but don't really want to concern themselves with the REAL world. For the most part people prefer ignorance.

Think about that for a minute - the "REAL world" you're talking about is outside the scope of local news, government (at all levels - people want to hear about their state and federal govt too) and weather, and so it probably has no effect at all on your life.

It's heartbeaking to hear about an earthquake or a hurricane across the country or across the world, but it's not like you can do anything about it, or know anyone involved, so to most people it's just about as useful as entertainment news or sports. These people aren't stupid. They're just not news information junkies.

I was reading just today about laws in Iran. Sure, that's great knowledge to have, but I might just as well have been knitting a sweater or collecting stamps, for all the effect it has on my life.

Re:Newspaper is killing the newspaper

[tsaler]

Like other fast media, they no longer see the purpose in getting it right the first time, but rather just being the first people out with something that is kind of like the truth.

Okay.

[/dev/trash]

So if the paper endorses Kerry in 2008, will you start reading again?

what about Digital Ink & e-paper

[Anonymous Coward]

This is but the latest on E-paper I would love a paper like display that could give all the various papers and magazines I want then turn into a map or something else. Papers when done right provide local flavour to the news. And that can be a good thing. Any publication should strive to represent the values of its community. Even virtul ones.

Not in my country

[agapits]

Newspaper is still the option for poor individuals who doesn't have access to cheap internet connection/computer (like in our country).

If i don't own an internet connected computer, it would cost me, let's say, 1$ to read online for an hour in an internet cafe. But after i go out of the cafe, if in case i wanna go back to read a news article, it would cost me again to re-read the same stuff.

So my take on it is as long there is poverty in this world, newspaper is still the best/practical/cheap option for the poor and common people.

Embrace the Inevitable

[pixelnix]

OK so I have to admit that I'm a bit old school and like to feel the weight of a newspaper in my hands when I read it, but we all knew that news media was headed for the www world! Newspapers were created as a convenient means to deliver news to people, and now that medium is evolving to keep up with that same level of convenience, in a faster paced climate. I personally doubt that newspapers will stop being created for at least a short time; a large deal of jobs will be lost and need to be recreated, and it's hard to imagine older generations carrying a laptop around to read the sports results and do crosswords! Maybe that's just me though. It's something your average consumer will expect when they invest thousands of dollars in a computer, and a large monthly fee to have internet, to have access to current news and events. Internet allows each viewer a chance to branch out and find a source of news that is more reliable than others, and a chance to find more information about the topics they are interested in. Clearly a newspaper is limiting when you compare it to the infinite spectrum of news on the web...but, then, some people prefer less choice.

I do agree with my husband though, that a world without paper to file will be a world more worthwhile! Try saying that 5 times quickly ;)

US Newspapers - black, white and crowded pages

[grouchal]

Why is it that US newspapers haven't evolved the way they look - no colour in most of them (in my experience - feel free to prove me wrong) Tiny fonts - trying to fit as much on to a broadsheet as possible. I think the lack of evoultion will dampen the appetite for newspapers - they have to make sure they emphasise their benefits - i.e. easy to read at home, on a train etc - feel more relaxing that reading a computer screen - when they do this you get good news papers (along with all the other requreiments for a good newspaper - indepth and thoughtful non-biased journalism).
Now to reveal my colours I like the Guardian in the UK - this is now a full colour news paper in the Berliner size - easy to read and the some of the innovations in there make it a pleasure to read - full colour on every page - glossary pices next to articles - with glossary words underlined in blue in the text - these are innovative ideas that will change how newspapers are viewed - but have not sacrificed quality in any way.

I love newspaper but I hate it!

[dothvader]

I love newspaper. I love the smell, the feel, the sound and that great pleasure of sitting at the table with my morning cup of coffee scanning and reading the day's stories. But I also hate it. They have disenfranchised readers as well as advertisers. First the readers - They are out of touch. They have abandoned real journalism for opinion in the guise of journalism. Their paper product is not timely since the advent of the internet and they will cover one topic to death thinking that is what their readers want. Now the the advertisers - The cost of advertising has far outpaced the cost of their product and their audience. In addition, they they have slumbered along resistant to change and innovation to help their advertisers. Unless they are will to grasp today's fast paced world and innovate they will be relegated to the recyling bin.

Re:Don't blame the Internet, blame the Invisible H

[Big_Al_B]

Before I start, I need to point out that any given medium's bias is not inherently bad. If they post it prominently on their figurative barber pole, then readers can accommodate that bias in their news processing. However, if an organization cloaks their bias in a "fair and balanced" mantra, that's simply dishonest, deceitful and damaging to consumers. I pick on FauxNews, but the same criticism applies throughout the ideological spectrum. If you give us a biased view, we need transparency.

I'm not surprised that the circulation of most newspapers is going down.

No one is.

What is happening is that there are too many liberal reporters and editors chasing after too few liberal readers. It isn't that anyone is intentionally "punishing" these papers, rather this is simply supply and demand. The invisible hand strikes again. There is less demand for liberal news and more demand for conservative news.

I doubt you're even in the ballpark. The circulation shift is not rooted, or even closely related to political ideology. The drop in newspaper circulation follows an blatant trend in media consumption. In the late 20th century, a literate middle class would regularly consume complex stories spanning multiple columns, pages and even days. Now the same demographic prefers to nibble at vacuous soundbites or content-free crawls, often fully satisfied with lead paragraphs masquarading as full reports.

In addition, there is little a print newspaper can do to compete with the immediacy of modern news. TV and internet news is now a multi-channel 24-hour flood of new, often dramatic, but consistently incomplete coverage.

Returning to ideology, I would say that the conservative talking point media aptly capitalizes on this new media consumption model. As a niche, the conservative pundits usually program to it, and they usually do so quite well. That's not a compliment.

Case in point,

Case in counterpoint. They don't come more conservative than the WSJ. But, congruent to my point, the WSJ is densely packed with content.

the circulation boom currently being enjoyed by the Washington Times:

The Times appears to have misrepresented the Wash. Post numbers a bit.This third-party resource shows different numbers. Kudos, though, to the Times for their creativity. Gotta love them for the spin that rising to 1/10 the circulation of their rival paper is a "win". Cookin' with gas now, they are.

Another example is Fox news,

--who pioneered the content-free shout-down political hours, with more drama then depth. It does not surprise me that sheeple get dazzled by FauxNews more than the others. Stewart on (the CNN show) Crossfire was frighteningly on point regarding the damage this programming genre does to our democratic republic.

The premiere liberal radio network, Air America, is also doing badly. In Washington DC its listener share is actually so low that it can't even be detected according to the Arbitron rating service:

And by contrast, when Fox entered TV back in the late '80s, they hit the market nose to nose with the big three, right? No? It took a decade for them to build market share? The hell you say! Perhaps this is normal?! Get OUT!

The issue here is not one of technology, but ideology. This country is, day by day, moving further and further away from the left and closer to the right

As evidenced by the administration's raging popularity right now. I'm stuck between, "Prove it with numbers," and, "You wish," as responses. Hell, why choose? Seriously though, show me the data to support this.

A conservative person is not going to choose news presented with a liberal bent to it when the same information is available with a conservative bent.

This reminds me

Re:Don't blame the Internet, blame the Invisible H

[Big_Al_B]

What's good for the goose is good for the gander

In this case, the negative is more applicable, "What's not good for the goose, is not good for the gander."

Turnabout is fair play

Fair play, yes. Wise play, not always.

The fact that we have "liberal" newspapers to appeal to ideological masses is not a good thing, either for democracy or journalism in general.

The fact that the middle class is choosing to become more trusting of idealogues, less informed, less critical, and less analytical is not a good thing, either for democracy or journalism in general.

Our growing tendency in the US to subscribe uncritically to a single ideology, spanning every issue and circumstance, is destructive beyond words.

Intellectual honesty must be applied to both sides, since each one has shown blatant tendencies towards self-serving lies.

Comics

[honestmonkey]

The only reason I buy a paper at all is to read the comics. It's easier than looking up 20 or 30 sites on-line and waiting for each to download. I may need to go do that eventually, then maybe I won't both with a paper at all.

Re: Adaptation

[shadow0_0]

This is also happening at the train stations in Sydney, Australia. The only problem is people just leave them behind on the train.

Re:Balancing wood

[Gary Destruction]

Let me break down for you mods: newspaper is made of paper. Paper is made from wood. Less newspaper = less wood used. Now, enter people who lived on the Gulf coast that used wood to board up their homes. Since less newspaper is being used, it helps balance out the wood that's being used for boarding up homes.