FollowI am not sure really.
Have seen “Page One” recently the documentary about the New York Times.
Do wish I finished the Mass Media and Politics class at Rutgers the professor said he was upset I left because he could see me working in this field. That thought has stuck with me.
I know for me, I read newspapers a lot less.
I am much more likely to read the local weekly about Westbrook/Gorham, Maine: The “American Journal” than I am to read the “Portland Press Herald”, the local daily here that at this point is pretty much an AP paper (ie most of the news stories are from the Associated Press not staff journalists.)
My friend Duke Harrington who works for the American Journal’s sister publication the “Current” and does a LOT of reporting for it, gave me some interesting links on Maine. The newspaper business is doing ok, but weekly superlocal papers are doing better than traditional dailies.
I think that is likely to continue.
I think free is the future of newspapers in America. Free is how many generation X, Y and Z readers read the paper. Often from websites. I don’t think the future is the “Washington Post Social Reader” off Facebook that is so full of frames to be completely unreadable.
I think it looks more like the Portland Daily Sun (a free daily similar to things like the London/NYC Metro newspaper); alternative weeklies like the Portland Phoenix (ie arts listings, etc.); free local papers like the American Journal and the Current; and independent monthlies like “The Bollard”. “The Bollard” is the local free paper I am most likely to read cover to cover, followed by the “American Journal.”
Mainly though I am moving from a lot of newspaper and magazine reading to book reading and I am not really missing it.
The newspaper with its objectivity, is often a very boring source. Books are much more rich.
The daily newspaper has had a nice run, but it was much more important in 1900 than today. Part of that is that we have radio, television, computers, e-mail, the Internet, Social Media …
We used to live in times of morning and evening newspapers, morning and evening mail delivery. Print is lessing it’s hold. It’s different. It’s weird.
We live in a time of Facebook, Twitter, Kindle, ebooks. Where it’s as easy to read a post from the BBC, the Independent or Al Jazeera as the local daily. And that’s interesting.
A lot of traditional newspapers provide good content, but it’s certainly not a monopoly.
What do you think?
Edmund