I'm going to be the devil's advocate for a second and ask the hard question: "Why would you ?".
In an age where the level of connectivity and communication is so high, most content can be found on the Internet and that before the newspaper is printed.
"For instance, who here gets their technology or sports news from a national or local newspaper? Who looks to newspapers for the latest stock market performance, restaurant reviews, or movie showtimes?"
Guess that question was rhetorical, but I'm going to answer it anyway:
I do! (well, maybe not movie showtimes)
There are many reasons I prefer an old-school newspaper for some things:
- I already spend every waking hour looking at screens,
paper is a nice break. Paper has some nice qualities too.
- Easier to read on a crowded subway than a pad [1],
no need to charge them, lighter, I throw it away when
I'm finished with it so I don't have to carry it around
all day
- I hate most online newspapers: 80% adds, shitty design,
seems to emphasise short stories to drive page views.
- Sometimes it's important that the news a "fresh",
and of course on-line wins there. But more often, the
stuff I read does not suffer much from being a few
hours old [2].
1 - I suspect.. they might be bigger but they are also soft and "bendable", and they don't break when that guy with the huge backpack turns and smashes it into you.
2 - Here in Scandinavia online news became popular early, and the newspapers have had more time to adapt to the threat/opportunity. I suspect this affects what they put in the paper editions.
I agree with all your reasons. I stopped buying the newspaper years ago. Today, I'd not buy it because the local paper is more popular news than hard news if it's news at all. The number of newspapers worth reading can be counted on one hand but I'd rather pay to read those online so their searchable. (Ack! Newspapers don't read HN, do they?)
The web. more specifically, web versions of articles, like how you see news websites now. Alternatively, crowdsourcing websites, like reddit and twitter. The content quality is generally pretty low, with a surplus of editorializing but you get news quickly.
I live in a podunk area, but already most of our local journalists and our newspaper have hopped on the web bandwagon. They were actually pretty proactive about it, surprisingly.
From the number of comments posted on the sites, it appears their web editions are very, very popular. My only beef is that most of the comments are low quality, not well thought out, and/or trolls, and I wish the staff would moderate similarly to how print editions do "Letters to the editors".
My contact at the local paper indicates they regularly have "Is it time to cut out the print edition, yet?". Thus far the answer has been "no", but that "yes" day is getting pretty close.
Because a newspaper is not a bunch of dead trees. It's the brand, the community history, the reporting. Take those, + scalable internet model and you can probably do decently.
You need to be explained why it's cheaper to publish news to a website than print physical papers every morning and deliver them to homes across the country every single day in time for it to be relevant?
I don't understand why this matters. Can't the newspaper companies just publish their stories online? Does it really matter whether I read the content in the paper or online? Honestly this seems like a good thing; we're saving resources and moving to a new media. Am I missing something?
The problem is that the cost of generating and distributing that local news is not sustainable in the face of internet technologies.
Witness this: I'm at a graduation celebration in Wisconsin this weekend, and all the parents attending throughout the day are very involved in student athletics. One of the kids was running in a track competition out of town with the rest of the school. The results were texted immediately throughout this small town. Another parent was tweeting the play by play of the track meet.
These are tech savvy 40 year olds, completely bypassing the print world. What can print offer them? Maybe a pic or two? They've got those instantly via FB. If this crowd is doing it, it's over for print papers.
And since online papers either need a paywall or higher revenue for ads, they just can't compete.
That's just sad. I guess I can understand the motivation, though that doesn't justify anything. It's becoming very difficult to monetize online newspapers, and they are forced to resort to such unethical practices to make ends meet.
Newspapers really have missed a trick or two in the transition to the internet.
For the typical newspaper, the online experience is horrible. The LA Times heats up my laptop. SF Gate is a heap of latency. My local paper is one Media General sold to Buffett: it's slow, buries the lead, wants me to sign in when I want to read the news and the front page is historically enthusiastic about Classmates.com.
The web has made newspapers so bad that even the New York Times lies to me about ten articles a month without batting an eye if I haven't recently deleted cookies. The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times tell me I must subscribe...except when I click on a link from a Google search.
I want to believe that, but I have a hard time proving it to myself. Growing up, I loved to read the paper. Without cable or Internet, it was the best information source I had available.
However, when I visit home & look at the local paper now, I find it pointless. The "news" is outdated & rarely as in-depth as what I can find online. Classifieds? I'm more likely to find what I want online, if not with Craigslist, with Ebay & Amazon. Opinion & perspective? Nothing really insightful. In fact, I don't think we'd lose anything if the local reporters simply became online bloggers. Likewise, local stories & the rest. I can get a richer set simply looking at local bloggers. They don't really do investigative reporting. So that leaves local sports. But does my high school football team really need a newspaper solely because of it? In the end, I realized that my local paper of old was an unconfigurable RSS reader & not a very good one as that.
Especially considering, that the printed old-fashioned Newspaper (at least if you select the right one!!!) has a professional writers and a more calm perspective on the world than social media and everything what we consume as media nowadays.
In an age where the level of connectivity and communication is so high, most content can be found on the Internet and that before the newspaper is printed.
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