Sunday, February 22, 2009

Is your newspaper relevant?

Is your daily newspaper relevant to your life?

As I write this I am too cold, too tired, too apathetic to mosey up the drive and pick up the morning news. It wasn't always such.

In the not so distant past, the first thing I'd do, each morning, would be rush out and get the news. I read it cover to cover as though it were scripture. I never understood mylate father in law, who would save the weeks papers for Sunday afternoon. I do now.

Charlie Rose has been running an infrequent series with vested interests on the future of the daily newspapers. The owners and publishers are planning and spending, and planning on spending great sums of money, just as soon as the recession is over and advertisers come back. Your paper will be in color, smaller in format, better, bolder, rah rah. Seems such a waste to me.

Print newspapers are dead, and the last to know are the news gatherers. Somehow seems indicative of the problem.

Many of the companies you rely upon every day are solely ad sponsored. They're just not delivered daily on paper. If you doubt me, take a look at Google.

Toad

7 comments:

preppyplayer said...

Thanks for letting us know where mardi gras was first celebrated!
I do agree with you regarding print news- seems old before it gets here.
I doappreciate the sunday paper with my coffee, but only the editorial and style sections, the rest is dated.

ADG said...

Print newspapers are dead, and the last to know are the news gatherers. Somehow seems indicative of the problem.

Toad...as usual, you are spot on. Denial by the gatherers steeped in the old way is not indicative of the problem. It IS the problem. Andy Grove from Intel and Henry Kissinger (I won't comment on his origins or current connections) come to mind. Grove first and then Kissinger...

"There comes a point in the life of every organization(or individual or product or service for that matter) where you must fundementally change in order to reach new levels of performance. Miss that point and you will decline"

"Conventional wisdom would dictate that a situation ignored is a problem solved. More often than not, it is a crisis invited".

Onward.

Mom on the Run said...

I'm a print girl, though. I love reading the newspaper. I know I'm in the minority, but I still run out in my jammies while the coffee is brewing. Yeah, so what if it's old news. I like holding it in my hand and reading it. We get two dailies and a weekly business paper. If we had time to read them, we'd probably get the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times weekend package. Whenever we travel, the first thing we do is read the local paper. I'm a junkie for newsprint and I'll be sad to see it end.

Giuseppe said...

I'm as old fashioned as anyone here, but I have to say that print newspapers seem to be an inexusable waste of paper these days.

I mean, clearly we're all spending too much time in front of the Evil Screen these days any way. Might as well get the news there too.

Martha said...

But you can't do a crossword on the "evil screen" -- I'm a print girl -- be it old news or not.

But yes, they took away our beloved KC Star (delivered now only on Sundays) . . . and I found that I don't miss it!!!!

But I have found that the paper is getting smaller . .. and smaller . . . and smaller -- the Sunday paper now is not much more than a weekday paper used to be!

Toad said...

I have found that I pretty much debone the daily paper before it comes in the house. Generally the only parts that come in are the comics and obits.

The local Sunday is generally ignored. I do still read the Times though.

Mrs. Blandings said...

You're spot on. One of my friends the other day said, "I'm worried that someday papers will be obsolete." I stared blankly and said, "They already are." Anyone who is surprised their local paper is going to go away is not paying attention. I think think a few will continue to publish. We will see.