They're disappearing, fast. English-language newspapers are folding like old butterflies. Forgive the analogy, but they've become rarer, endangered and threatened with dusty death.
Surviving newspapers are busy trying to seduce the public with those free, reduced editions with trivial content. With this freebie you don't need cushions for the park bench. Most end up decorating city gutters or hugging the side of tall buildings.
Pay for the full edition and you'll get in-depth reportage, and rich, thoughtful editorials for trimmings.....
Or will you? Your newspaper may already be on the down and down, having laid off good journalists, and content may be read, copied and pasted from other sources.
If you're not virtual you're down for the count.
In the rush to go virtual, newspapers, syndicated or not, are pleading with the public: don't leave us, we're the PRESS!
We're the life-blood of democracy!
People often are hesitant or unwilling to subscribe to on-line editions. After all, a huge virtual smorgasbord is waiting out there, two pecks away.
ipads and other such playthings are easy and seductive, it's like, why bother?
Some subway riders still read newspapers, but few in New York under 45 appear to read hard print news. Books yes, newspapers no, and this is not simply anecdotal. Much of the reading public has migrated to favorite news sites, ones that cater to their cultural and political tastes.
So how much longer can newspapers hold out? Will they become be like LPs (vinyl to you youth)-- produced for special crowds: the snobs, the sentimentalists, the cognoscenti (who?) and the old-fashioned geysers, who still think a 'reader' is a person.
Do we care? Hell yes we care!
I love NY Times-print on my sweaty fingers, I love Maureen Dowd, even if she's shrill, and Suzy Menkes who's a wiz on fashion, and Nicholas Kristof and Paul Krugman, smart and wise and full of compassion, and others in the same IHT that delivers a challenging Sunday crossword, Doonesbury and fine book reviews.
A good newspaper gives you world news to dig into, editorialists of different political stripes sharing the pages, the opportunity to stretch your mind a bit, or at least put in a newspaper stent to keep it open.
This blog is called Newspaper Guilt. Newspaper Guilt comes in two varieties: the guilt that induces you to buy that newspaper even if you can get it on-line, and the guilt induced by not buying that newspaper and realizing you are bidding farewell to a very, very old tradition.
PS I'm not including newspapers closed because of scandal-mongering spying and phone-tapping carried out by the crude and the cruel. Mr. Murdoch-- move over, you're squashing dignity and truth and breathing our air.
For a (self-pitying?) picture check out the website of the defunct News of the World that deserved to become defunct.
http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/.
Surviving newspapers are busy trying to seduce the public with those free, reduced editions with trivial content. With this freebie you don't need cushions for the park bench. Most end up decorating city gutters or hugging the side of tall buildings.
Pay for the full edition and you'll get in-depth reportage, and rich, thoughtful editorials for trimmings.....
Or will you? Your newspaper may already be on the down and down, having laid off good journalists, and content may be read, copied and pasted from other sources.
If you're not virtual you're down for the count.
In the rush to go virtual, newspapers, syndicated or not, are pleading with the public: don't leave us, we're the PRESS!
We're the life-blood of democracy!
People often are hesitant or unwilling to subscribe to on-line editions. After all, a huge virtual smorgasbord is waiting out there, two pecks away.
ipads and other such playthings are easy and seductive, it's like, why bother?
Some subway riders still read newspapers, but few in New York under 45 appear to read hard print news. Books yes, newspapers no, and this is not simply anecdotal. Much of the reading public has migrated to favorite news sites, ones that cater to their cultural and political tastes.
So how much longer can newspapers hold out? Will they become be like LPs (vinyl to you youth)-- produced for special crowds: the snobs, the sentimentalists, the cognoscenti (who?) and the old-fashioned geysers, who still think a 'reader' is a person.
Do we care? Hell yes we care!
I love NY Times-print on my sweaty fingers, I love Maureen Dowd, even if she's shrill, and Suzy Menkes who's a wiz on fashion, and Nicholas Kristof and Paul Krugman, smart and wise and full of compassion, and others in the same IHT that delivers a challenging Sunday crossword, Doonesbury and fine book reviews.
A good newspaper gives you world news to dig into, editorialists of different political stripes sharing the pages, the opportunity to stretch your mind a bit, or at least put in a newspaper stent to keep it open.
This blog is called Newspaper Guilt. Newspaper Guilt comes in two varieties: the guilt that induces you to buy that newspaper even if you can get it on-line, and the guilt induced by not buying that newspaper and realizing you are bidding farewell to a very, very old tradition.
PS I'm not including newspapers closed because of scandal-mongering spying and phone-tapping carried out by the crude and the cruel. Mr. Murdoch-- move over, you're squashing dignity and truth and breathing our air.
For a (self-pitying?) picture check out the website of the defunct News of the World that deserved to become defunct.
http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/.
