Comments on: Another Nail in Print’s Coffin

By: Lois

Lois — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 10:16:47 +0000

I was a newspaper reporter and editor until 14 years ago. We were lamenting the certain demise of print news within 20 years back then, despite the double-digit profits the publishers were reporting in a recession.

I lived and worked in Chicago - a great newspaper town, with six dailies at least and its very own wire service, when I was growing up - and later moved to east central Illinois, where I covered City Hall for a medium-sized daily. What the internet news services, as they exist now, can’t replace, is the local coverage provided by the smaller dailies and weeklies. These papers serve a real purpose in their communities. The death of those newspapers would be analogous to papers now only serving up wire stories. Then, yes, papers would be dead.

As for format, I’ll always choose hard copy over electronic when I’m going to spend time reading. While san serif type is easier to read on a computer screen, the brain picks up the “flags” on serif so that it’s actually much easier and less tiring to read. Combine that with the long-term effect of staring at pixels, and print material wins hands-down. So when I want to read an in-depth news analysis of why a relatively inexperienced newcomer from my state could become president, I’ll read it on the printed page of the Trib or NYT, and not on their websites. The latest on Britney, however, is short enough to be scanned on the ‘net.

By: Imobiliare

Imobiliare — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 06:29:37 +0000

I thinks newspappers will go digital on this point and that’s it.

By: Trillian

Trillian — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 05:37:17 +0000

Looking at the entries and surveying my contemporaries, there will definitely be a split between those who read the newspaper and those who do not. The forty-something crowd is barely reading the newspaper. The thirty-something crowd is not reading the newspaper. Just the other day I opened the telephone book to find a service and my teenaged daughter started laughing at me saying, “Daddy what are you doing looking in the telephone book?” From a marketing perspective, if you are trying to reach the mid-fifty and older demographic, the newspaper will work. I am unsure how long that will continue.

By: Testing

Testing — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 12:17:58 +0000

G’night

By: gsm

gsm — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 17:25:50 +0000

I don’t think newspaper will die out (completely). Newspapers here are still being read alot but only when it’s easy to get the paper. If say people would have to go to the store everyday to buy it they would much rather look on the internet.

By: Gloria

Gloria — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 10:03:40 +0000

I work in manufacturing, as labor to be exact. In the break room we have the Birmingham News supplied daily by the company. It is read. Not only read, we sometimes argue over who gets what section first!

Who reads the paper? Guys in their twenties. Old ladies of fifty-something and one of seventy-something. The owner of the company and the company’s secretary.

Newspapers dead? Not hardly.

What’s popular? Comics, horoscopes, grocery store ads, the editorial page, local news section, and the front page. And I never fail to read the money and tech sections.

Now who am I? Fifty-something. Female (can’t you tell by the name?). College degree. Literate. Computer literate. I’m fully aware that the national headlines presented on Yahoo last night will be the front page in tomorrow’s Birmingham News. Still, the newspaper gets read.

By: michelle

michelle — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 19:56:28 +0000

One of our oldest newspapers, The Birmingham Post-Herald, recently closed its doors. In a town as small as ours, and with the internet available, there’s no longer a need for two daily newspapers. But I think all cities will continue to have at least one daily, no matter how popular the internet is or may become.

By: Frank Catalano

Frank Catalano — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 15:12:08 +0000

I live in the Seattle area. We’ve now been without power since Thursday night.

Suddenly, phone books and newspapers are a wonderful fall-back technology when there’s no power (or cable modem or DSL) to look up phone numbers or find out how to reach someone or what’s going on (except, of course, for the battery-powered radio).

This isn’t a isolated tale of woe: In many developing countries, there is no reliable power. Paper media will be around for quite a while, until electronic media becomes self-powering.

By: STEVE OKEEFE

STEVE OKEEFE — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 03:42:34 +0000

I read the Wall Street Journal every day. As far as I can tell, none of my employees read any newspapers (the oldest of them is approaching 40). Virtually none of my students read newspapers. It would be fair to say they “look at” magazines, they don’t “read” them. Phone books? Forgettaboutit! Have you seen the new “Call To” feature on Google Maps? It’s going to make phone books historical artifacts. And books themselves are struggling. Where are we going to turn for analysis that takes more than 5 minutes to consume?

By: Zac Vega

Zac Vega — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 16:48:58 +0000

Here’s my prediction.

Dailies will always exist, especially all these free dailies that are popping up all over the place. (the ad dollars will support the free dalies)

Saturday, and Sundays editions will still be available, that’s the only time people have to read that much newspaper.