No More Dead-Tree Newspapers?

I agree with your transition to e-news.
I was never a big fan of wrestling with loads of paper and attempting to filter out articles of my interest. Besides, can the papernews ever give you an instant, up-to-date "live" Breaking news? I think not. But the sunday cartoons still rock !

i get most of my news on line as well. except for when i have time to hit the lunch-room at, uh, lunch for the noon news-hour.

I WENT FROM FOUR NEWSPAPERS A DAY DOWN TO ZERO.
REASONS----1.TOO LIBERAL, I LIVE IN A SOCIALISTIC STATE CALLED WASHINGTON.
2. NO DEPTH--REPORTERS COPY OTHERS
3. I CAN GO ON BUT YOU GET MY DRIFT

in the not to distant future...

we'll have a roll-up flexible computer screen that you can read like today's newspaper...during the night, wi-fi will 'reach out' and download all the news you're interested in

you'll get up in the am, grab the flexible screen, and read it like the old fashioned ink papers...think of the savings...no trees, no vehicles to deliver, etc

you can even take the flexible screen to the 'john'!!!

Mike

i read the nytimes via their website (mostly because subscriptions are so expensive), but still get the la times in the paper edition and much prefer to read it in that medium.

Here's some reasons why:

- The daily newspaper for me still has a feeling of wholeness, and totality. When you've read through the paper, YOU'VE READ THROUGH THE PAPER. You know what stories you've skipped over, and have a general sense of all the events covered that day.

internet sites (including this one) seem more piecemeal and fractured.

- the internet for all its benefits is an ultimately distracting medium. you read one thing for a few seconds then switch then switch... nothing is supposed to merit your full attention.

- There's still nothing like eating breakfast (for those of you that still do) while reading the paper. Doing it off a laptop isn't the same, not to mention the danger of coffee spills.

- Reading off the computer is still more straining, less pleasurable than off of paper.

on the positive end, one of the nice things about the internet is being able to read periodicals from places you're no longer geographically close to -- like the LA Reader, the Village Voice, The Santa Barbara Independent, The Bakersfield Californianian, Spain's El Pais ... it lets you keep in touch with whats going on in other places...

I like the daily newspaper, and I do get it. Be that as it may, I also like to read the out-of-town paper on the WEB. I love the starbulletin.com (Honolulu), and I can't get enough of the iht.com (International Herald Tribune).

I read the NY Times on line now after a lifetime of reading the paper paper. Why? I can't stand the mess and disposing of the paper newspapers. Like most readers, I only read part of the paper anyway. Someday there won't be any paper newspapers. I just retired after 52 years as a dedicated newsPAPER reporter, edtor and publisher.

For news junkies, the internet is the best thing to ever happen. People tend to read from news sources, regardless of the medium, that reinforce their own viewpoint. With the internet, the option is there to read sources from every conceivable position. This is in contrast to the local newspaper which is generally a de facto monopoly with a filtered viewpoint reflecting that of the editorial staff. Newsmags also have distinctive biases. I now feel I have a much more rounded view of a given story than before.

I used to get Newsweek, USN&WR, National Geographic, the local paper, Consumer Reports, Scientific American, Pop Sci, and Details. Those were my regular subscriptions in addition to other transient ones.

I'm not quite paper-free or subscription-free. I still get NG at home and split the newspaper with the guys at work. However, I do feel much better the last few years when I take my paper bin to the curb once every other month instead of every week.

As a blind person, I was once limited strictly to radio and television for virtually all my news. Some Radio Reading Services provided access to as much of the local newspaper as the volunteers could read in three of fours per evening.

Now, at least on sites that happen to be reasonably accessible to my JAWS screen reader, the Internet has represented a tool of absolute liberation and, at times, outright information overload! In addition to text news and information, audio content is available to me and is being rapidly expanded thanks to podcasting! RSS allows me to keep track of everything in one, easy to access place via the BlogLines web based aggregator. It is a great world, so long as the sighted designers of all this stuff don't manage to find a way to take it all away from us through inaccessibility without consideration of the needs of people with disabilities!

Ok, but how do you get the page 2,3,4 stories of each section of the newspaper (jennies kitty had kittens, local boy hits home run in final game).

Almost all the sites I go to are only the big headlines (or at least what the editors think are the big headlines), how do you get around this?

I am pretty much a techno geek, but I couldn't disagree more with this blog topic. I cancelled my Newspaper some time back because they were not able to get it to my house on time in the morning. I like to read it while I am eating my breakfast and right before I go to work. I also live in a fairly small community (about 60,000) and I really can't get the local news any other way besides the local AM staion.

So, I tried to look at the news online with my laptop while I ate. I didn't much care for it. I also didn't like getting right out of the bed and staring at the screen first thing in the morning -- only to have to go to work and stare at the screen all day long there was well. And laptops while sitting on the throne don't work too well, either.

So, after about two months of this, I gave up and got my subscription restarted. They had a new delivery person by the time I rejoined and the paper is here even earlier than it used to be.

I missed it and I couldn't do without it. I don't know that I will ever be able to do without it. Even in the city where I used to live (where you could all newspaper content online for free) reading on the screen just wasn't the same for me. Harder on the eyes, I couldn't focus (would get off topic and be off clicking somewhere else before I knew it). I NEVER thought I would hear myself say this -- but I really like the dead tree method of written content delivery.

The same goes for the mags that I get (which I could get online for free). I can get all the same info, but it just isn't the same on the screen. Man, I hope I am not becoming a luddite.

Mike T

I live in Japan but can't read much Japanese, so I was happy to subscribe to the International Herald Tribune when they offered me a 1/2-off deal for teachers. But I found i had no time to read the whole thing every day, and the IHT is quite thin! Thing is, I work full time for one university and part time for two others, plus another part-time job. So for me, reading the news is checking online once or twice a day, when I have time. And if I'm in a heavy grading period or working on a paper for publication, I may not read any news for a week or more.

When I was stationed overseas, about the only way to get news on things going back in the U.S., was the internet. I tried paper subscriptions, but it would take a week or longer to get. Who wants to read old news? I now live in Pensacala and I subscribe to the weekend editions only. Those are mainly for store cupons and sales papers. I check the inernet several times a day for news. SAVE THE TREES!
Most online news, only cost you your ISP charges.

Why put up with all the hassles of print newspapers? Soggy papers when it rains. Trudging through the snow in your slippers in the winter. The expense. Why? Local news. It's all they do that can't be gotten for free on the Internet. After I canceled my subscription to The Hartford Courant (the nation's oldest continuously published newspaper) they sent me a series of offers culminating in an offer of 75% off ($1.25 a week!) for Sunday through Saturday. So... quit your paper. Read it at work if you must but trust me, the offers will come. Then decide: Is local news worth a buck and a quarter?

Between ESPN's, CNN's PCWorld's, Yahoo's, Wired's and half a dozen other RSS feeds, in addition to getting the ChiTrib in my email everymorning, I've given up on print media