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Is it The End Of Newspapers?

scotrace

Head Bartender
Staff member
Messages
14,393
Location
Small Town Ohio, USA
This chart is rather sobering.
NewspCirc033105and093007.jpeg


Here's the story.

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

Lady Day

I'll Lock Up
Bartender
Messages
9,087
Location
Crummy town, USA
I think your last sentence just summed up a general feel on papers. Why subscribe, so many articles are AP or 'features' and are all the same. Online you can find info bent on however you think :) OR you can find more level commentary on anything and then form an opinion on things.

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

LD
 

Feraud

Bartender
Messages
17,188
Location
Hardlucksville, NY
We cancelled The New York Times and only have the Wall Street Journal delivered. The decision to cancel was based on delivery service and reading time. I have less time than I want for newspapers but do a fair amount of news reading online.
 

LizzieMaine

Bartender
Messages
33,825
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
One more reason why I wish I had chosen any profession in the world but journalism when I was 20. No matter how highly-vaunted the "blogosphere/citizen journalism" thing may be, it's no substitute for the responsibility and accountability that goes along with the printed page, and I for one will keep buying papers until there's none left to buy.

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

dhermann1

I'll Lock Up
Messages
9,154
Location
Da Bronx, NY, USA
My girlfriend takes the WSJ, and I must say, I like the articles and features better than the Times. As far as the future is concerned, as Lewis Mumford once said, trend is not destiny. Papers will continue to decline, but I don't think they'll go away.
I think the trend to build new cities that have a real urban feel is a good sign. Newspapers are an urban thing. It's great to sit in a cafe with your coffee and croissant and read the paper. Or sit on the bus or subway and read it. They go together, like peanut butter and jelly.
 

Maj.Nick Danger

I'll Lock Up
Messages
4,469
Location
Behind the 8 ball,..
I only buy an occasional Sunday paper to read the want ads, my horoscope, and the color comics. Also makes good packing material when shipping items sold online, and is indispensable as a protective covering on floors and furniture for painting projects. I will also buy any paper that features articles or ads about the group of artists and gallery projects I am involved with, to have a record of our fame and fortune for posterity. :)
 

Gary Crumrine

One of the Regulars
Messages
124
Location
Southwest
We take the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, whose contents are (as Wm. Buckley once wrote on another matter) daily exfoliated from the wings of angels. Lesser newspapers reflect the wishes of hopeful young things who have never made a payroll.
 

Julian

New in Town
Messages
31
Location
The City of Angels
I think the huge national newspapers lilke the New York Times and the WSJ need to accept that they are no longer the place people go for news. By the time a paper gets an edition out with a big headline, that same story is old news on the internet.

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

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

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

I think this may be a good thing.
 

Paisley

I'll Lock Up
Messages
5,439
Location
Indianapolis
I get the WSJ online. It's much cheaper than the print version, and it's great for financial research.

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

52Styleline

A-List Customer
Messages
322
Location
W Oregon
Our local paper is getting so skimpy it often seems to hardly be there and this is the Capital of the State. I think the demise of the local sheet began when it shifted from an evening paper to a morning publication. The change was made to satisfy the advertisers who wanted their pitches to hit the shopper as he or she left home for the day, but that didn't seem to work and now the advertisers have deserted the paper. And as far as a reader goes, because of its early publication..it is nothing but old news. A few years ago, nearly everyone in town took the local paper. Now few do. I read it at work and that barely takes five minutes.
 

panamag8or

Practically Family
Messages
859
Location
Florida
LizzieMaine said:
One more reason why I wish I had chosen any profession in the world but journalism when I was 20. No matter how highly-vaunted the "blogosphere/citizen journalism" thing may be, it's no substitute for the responsibility and accountability that goes along with the printed page, and I for one will keep buying papers until there's none left to buy.

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

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

Oh, my cat isn't picky... paper, keyboard, it's all the same to her.lol
 
LizzieMaine said:
No matter how highly-vaunted the "blogosphere/citizen journalism" thing may be, it's no substitute for the responsibility and accountability that goes along with the printed page, and I for one will keep buying papers until there's none left to buy.
Miss Lizzie, with all due respect, and one ex-journalist to another, have you seen some of the stuff on the NYTimes headlines and editorial-page lately? Responsibility and accountability indeed... *snort*

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

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

Mid-fogey

Practically Family
Messages
720
Location
The Virginia Peninsula
I guess...

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

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

K.D. Lightner

Call Me a Cab
Messages
2,354
Location
Des Moines, IA
My mother subscribes to the Des Moines Register, has read it all her life. I have gotten used to reading it every morning, good for local news and events, obituaries (how else would I know who has died?), and I like the movie review and funnies.

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

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

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

karol
 

Twitch

My Mail is Forwarded Here
Messages
3,133
Location
City of the Angels
Been subscribing to Long Beach paper since the 60s. Problem I find with a lot of the online "news" is that is is simply very poorly written. I see stuff that people on forums point to and find compositions that are often pure speculation with no substantial core facts, just some schlub's perspective of an event who wishes to jaundice you into seeing what his warped mind extruded from it.

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

Miss_Bella_Hell

My Mail is Forwarded Here
Messages
3,960
Location
Los Angeles, CA
I subscribe to the paper WSJ - good student rates. I think that as long as there are long train commutes there will be someone reading the paper - it's when I read mine.
 

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