NEWSPAPERS: A trusty friend or a dinosaur
Very weird. Newspapers are going 
out of business. The Boston Globe, The Seattle Post Intelligencer, the Philadelphia Daily News, the Minneapolis Stare Tribune, the Miami Herald, the Detroit News, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Sun-Times, the New York Daily News, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Stalwarts of local news and views, these trusty sources of information are beginning to die away. I even remember when some big cities could support two newspapers (New York still does in its own way: The New York Post, New York Daily News and THE NEW YORK TIMES, among others…) The information age is taking it’s toll on newsprint. People want their news when they want it. And that means if a story is developing they want to follow the developments, minute by minute. When the plane came down in the Hudson I went online and watched in real time what was happening (courtesy of CNN). Meanwhile, Twitter got the story first—an interesting development for a social media platform. One could probably smell a bit of doom for the papers when their own writers were skipping off to do blogs (just to keep the news fresh, plus REALLY express a thought or opinion). In a time when the world is shifting so dramatically maybe readers want opinions and not just unbiased news. Maybe they want to know what other people are thinking… The rise of the blog would suggest this sentiment.
I’ve always found newspapers unwieldy, dirty hands making and a waste of paper. Not that the information in the pages isn’t important and in fact is one of the best things about a free society. But the actual paper itself is a bit of a pain to deal with. Getting news online is fast and doesn’t kill a tree. BUT, people (myself included) enjoy the prospect of actually having something “in hand.” I’m a sentimentalist by nature. I will almost always default to emotional attachments. So when a paper goes down, no matter how messy or irritating it is to read, I’m going to feel a pang of nostalgia. But time is moving on and things are going to keep changing (and fast!)
