The End Of Newsprint
from the who-needs-it dept
Michael S. Malone is discovering that he no longer reads newspapers in newsprint. This may not sound all that surprising, but he’s yet another long time newspaper man, who’s suddenly realized that he has little need for newsprint. He’s still reading news, but he’s building his own paper: “a real-time assemblage of wire service stories, newspaper features, blogs, bulletin boards, columns, etc.” This is, of course, what some have been saying was happening for a while, and it’s clear that Malone has been building up to this. He’s recently written other stories about how the NY Times online would kill itself by charging and how news consumption has changed over the years, to the point that people now want to be a part of the news, rather than just consume it. It’s a lesson that those in the newspaper business need to understand. While it looks like some are figuring it out, others dismiss Malone’s concepts by saying that people have been predicting the death of newsprint for decades and it hasn’t happened. That certainly seems a little short-sighted… or rather, rear sighted. It seems that those folks are all about looking backwards, rather than looking forward, which doesn’t seem like the best strategy for avoiding future accidents.
Comments on “The End Of Newsprint”
No Subject Given
Most local papers are just a bunch of strung-together AP feeds. There are about 3 papers that have stories you can’t get anywhere else (i.e. not online). One is wall street journal. Another is the New York Times (It takes me 3 hours or more to read the Sunday Times) and they are all written by Times reporters where the articles can only be found in the times.
AP articles are, by their very nature, superficial and lack any degree of depth. Your previous comments about charging online is true if applied to papers that take from the same sources as yahoo and MSN.com. Since the times offers unique content, they MAY get away with charging online, since we would all have to go out and buy the paper again (something I stopped doing years ago when the Times went online).
If the Ann Arbor news or Detroit News started charging on the other hand, I would jiust go to Yahoo.com to get the same news.
Re: AP vs. NYT [re: Jeff's post]
AP writers used to be pretty clueless but they’ve gotten much better over the years.
In terms of keeping political bias out of news articles, I’ll take AP over the NY Times any day. Not all NYT articles are slanted, but on certain subjects the writers seem to go out of their way to spin the news their way by downplaying or completely ignoring facts that don’t suit their notions.
Re: No Subject Given
Jeff wrote: Most local papers are just a bunch of strung-together AP feeds. There are about 3 papers that have stories you can’t get anywhere else (i.e. not online). One is wall street journal. Another is the New York Times
Yeah, I guess that’s true, if you live in New York. But for those of us who live elsewhere, the local paper gives LOCAL NEWS. That may not be important to you, but it’s important to a LOT of people. And yeah, my local newspaper has a web site, and right now it’s free-if-you-register (and all that requires is a valid email address). Right now I do subscribe to the print paper, but mainly because a) it’s easier to read print paper in the toilet, and b) I like getting the Sunday ads to see what’s on sale that week.
Re: Re: No Subject Given
Yes I get my local paper for the local news too. So I stand corrected thatr those articles are unique too. But the Times has unique stories on national issues and are usually very in-depth, unlike the AP articles that the local papers print.
Re: Re: Re: As soon as paper is "dead"
…someone will start printing things out on paper again. I don’t doubt that as a mass media, newsprint will die when flexible plastic screens come into play. Upload the day’s “paper”, take it on the subway. Everybody wins. But there can always be a role for newsprint, even if it is in the “nostaglia” business.
Our local paper consists of about 8 stories and a bunch of newsfeeds. But its not about the news feeds, its about the ads that go in them. We have a “pennysaver” mag, too, that is all classified & other ads, and it goes like hotcakes, and is always read.
?
Yeah, but will your computer fit in the bottom of your bird cage? Will it? Go measure now!
Newspapers
I haven’t subscribed to a newspaper for years now – ugly, hard to read, dirty ink .. never liked ’em and the minute the web started giving me what I needed, I dropped them entirely..
Local News...
Not everyone lives in a big city where local news is really national news. There are lot of us who live in small towns where local news is actually local and important to the comunity. My towns daily paper averages about seven to eight pages a day, and is only published weekdays. There may be one or two stories from the AP, the rest is actual events that have an importance to the community. I use the internet for national news, and my towns newspaper for local news.