Here is the future of newspapers.

http://detroitfreepress.mi.ussrv16.newsmemory.com/demo.php
The last paper in Detroit is the Free Press. It will deliver 3 days a week and give this site to us the rest of the week. I suppose they will charge us for it whether we like the format or not. I do not know how long it would take to get used to it. I wont be able to do the crossword in the can or wrap fish or line the cat litter bowl or wash windows with it or touch and feel paper. I do not plan on liking it but I will have to adjust. crap

$1000 says they fail. The layout is wrong, the concept of paying (if they’re really trying that) is a non-starter.

Weekly newspapers are the future. There’s room for daily news-oriented websites but not ones that have staff in the hundreds.

I’d like to suggest that the future of print is local news.

I can get national and international news from many sources on the internet (and TV), some of them exactly the same article that my local rag prints the next day. CNN, Reuters, MSNBC, and the AP (for examples) don’t care about in depth articles about the transit cutbacks or the scum running that fire district in North County. If the Post-Dispatch set their reporters to consistently and knowledgeably report hard news from the St. Louis area, and only gave broader news a mention, I’d happily continue to subscribe.

Oh yeah, and they have to drop For Better or For Worse reruns and add Peanuts reruns. But that’s all.

Local news is terrible. They not only cover very little but now have exercise and cooking demonstrations regularly. At least in Detroit that is true.
Evey story is about a minute of coverage. Then sports and weather. A half hour news show is about 20 minutes of news and then ads. While you are watching the news they feel the need to advertise …the news.
We have had quite a few stories on corruption and the weird politics that is Detroit. Lately our whole vice squad got caught fudging records. We keep our politics ugly around here.

I truly do not know what my mother would do if they ever stop printing the Cleveland Plain Dealer. She’s 83, she can’t read the multiple overlaid crawls at the bottom of the TV news, she has trouble following people who speak quickly (like newsreaders) and she can’t work a computer…and will NOT buy one. She will continue to listen to NPR, but if she didn’t have her newspaper to read all day, and the more in-depth reporting you find there…and the coupons in the Sunday supplement, and the Jumble and the crossword, and the funnies…I really believe she will give up and die. The newspaper keeps her mind sharp, keeps her entertained and structures her day. Her, and countless other older people who depend on daily home delivery of the paper. My mom could not get to a corner store to get a paper if they stopped home delivery, because she doesn’t drive anymore, and for me to have to go get one for her fiorst thing in the morning would require an extra half-hour of my life, and a lot of wasted gas.

That’s the TV local news. What I want is good local print news, that covers ALL the local news. What’s happening in the city council? What’s happening in the school district? How are the local road construction projects going? Any court cases of local importance going on? Etc.

Ed

Are we talking about TV or newpapers? Your OP was about a newspaper, hence my confusion.

Mine too. You are suggesting that local news papers will survive? We have a local paper that covers muggings and high school athletics. it tosses in a bit of local politics too. I have not heard they are in trouble so you may be right.

Jesus Fucking Christ on a Stick, gonzomax! It is your OP in this thread! Your OP, about the DETROIT FREE PRESS, a NEWSPAPER!

Pull your head out of your ass, already.

I believe that’s supposed to be “Jesus Fucking Christ on a Pogo Stick”. But the rest is ok.

You can buy crossword puzzle books. You can also buy… um, paper, from a lot of places if needed for kitty, if not for free from somewhere.

I’ll show you the future of newspapers: A boot stamping on ad copy, forever.

You can?
Crossword puzzle people like a familiarity. We do the NYT puzzle because it has a degree of difficulty and we know what it is likely to be like. Just aimlessly doing puzzles does not get it.

Supposedly the New York Times could buy ever subscriber an Amazon Kindle and stop using paper and ink and come out ahead in a year.

Probably half of the men in my office take the local Kansas City Star newspaper (oddly, the women either take the Wall Street Journal or nothing). The sole reason that the men take the Star is for the Sports Section. In fact, it’s a common source of disgust for me to see each day the a stack of the entirety of the newspaper - minus the Sports Section - piled high in the recycle bin.

If all you’re going to read is a few pages of Sports, why in the hell 1) can’t you find that same information online, to 2) save money, and 3) save energy and resources by not taking 2 pounds of ink and paper and essentially throwing it directly in the trash, minus one section?

I guess the Star is probably pretty happy with that sort of customer as well, however - they can concentrate on the Sports Section and essentially let barely-out-of-school journalism students (or interns) write their news, sometimes even their op-ed pieces.

I learned to read by reading the L.A. Times. I read practically the whole paper every day during my High School years. I had it delivered to my dorm in college in San Diego and then to the various shared apartments and houses during college and grad school. Even when I was dirt poor during certain times as a starving student, I kept up my subscription. I got my first professional job in Santa Barbara and one of the first things I did was get the Times delivery started. I took the paper to work and read it while I ate my lunch.

From the age of maybe 14 to my mid-30’s, other than when I was traveling out of town, I read the L.A. Times every day. Then I got internet access at home and at work. I found that many days, the entire paper went unread. Who the hell needs news that is sixteen hours out of date? What use is the sports page if the Dodger game went into extra innings and the final result isn’t available? I finally gave up my subscription. I wouldn’t even take it if it was free because it would just go to waste.

It’s a shame, I guess, for people in the industry but the world has moved on. Large city newspapers are obsolete. Done. Over. The sooner you get used to it, the better.

That’d be pretty cool. It’d have some other benefits too.

Right now if some breaking news happens you have to wait till the next day to read it. With a Kindle like system they can push it out soon as they have a story.

Also you could read the previous day’s news or any news. You could prolly set up some interactivity for crosswords. No stolen paper problems.

You could have comment sections where people can discuss and vote on topics, issues, and polls.

Plus with economies of scale the prices of kindle or kindle like devices would really come down.

That’s fine, TTR, but which of those things aren’t already readily available to anyone with computer access or a PDA/iPhone.

As someone in the newspaper industry, I’m taking a wait-and-see approach to the experiment in Detroit. If nothing else, I have to give them props for trying something. So many publishers and corporate leaders at newspapers have sat on their hands for the last decade, deathly afraid of change until there was no choice but to make the most drastic and harmful decisions for the staff and the readers.

Kittenblue, I hate to say this, but your mother is the kind of reader that newspapers both can’t afford to lose and can’t afford to keep. A lot of the features that keep readers happy — the TV listings, stock agate — are also holes into which publishers shovel money with no return. There’s not a weekly TV listing in a newspaper in America that’s making money. I know The Star, my former employer, is now going to charge extra for its Sunday TV supplement, on an opt-in basis. Most subscribers won’t get it unless they specifically request it. And there will be a lot of wailing and moaning from readers, but no one wants to buy ads in the TV book anymore, because all the demographics that advertisers want to target get their TV listings off the cable box, or on the Internet, or stream all their shows on Hulu. I don’t mean to be crass or insult newspaper readers, but frankly, we can’t afford to give them what they want anymore, unless we charge them $10 a paper. The people who read the paper are not people advertisers are interested in spending their money on.

(An aside to Una: I don’t begrudge you your opinion of The Star. Not all of the writers are top-notch, by any means. But not all of them are fresh out of school, either. But keep in mind when you complain about the loss of quality that The Star has had five rounds of layoffs in the newsroom since last summer. Corporate-mandated cutbacks are costing good people their jobs and bleeding the paper dry. And, for the record, don’t think that anything you see on the Opinion page is mandated from Sacramento. McClatchy is a very hands-off company, editorially. They like their good investigative stories, but they’re not dictating coverage at all. All they want is their money. It just so happens they want a hell of a lot of it to pay off billions in debt.)

Funny you should say that. I was thinking that too when I wrote it, but thinking on it those have some issues.
I think the main advantage of a kindle like system is it’s cheap and designed for reading.

I have a rooted G1 I read e-books on. It’s great but one problem it has is a tiny screen, same with any other PDA/smart phone. Laptops are nice but they’re a bit much to haul around, and don’t have very good battery life.
Tablet personal computers could do it but they’re pretty expensive right now, and prolly have the same battery issues. Kindles however are a form of highly specialized tablet computer.

Also you have human behavior. When I set down to my computer I don’t think “read the news!” I think “porn! bootleg music! video games! school work! hacking (as in perl hacker)!” I could go on but the point is on generalized device newspapers have alot of of noise to compete with. Where as on a specialized device you pick it up and think “news!”

Also you have to worry about delivery of the data. The Kindle 2 uses cellular internet to deliver ebooks. So you can buy books regardless of if you’d otherwise have internet access.

I’m sure you could can see why a newspaper switching to tablet systems would want to have a reliable delivery method, especially with elderly and other potentially groups who may not have internet access.

Which brings up another point. Ease of use. A computer is a computer. It’s complicated, it has it’s own language and concepts. Has reliability issues and isn’t designed specifically to be a news paper.

Basically you want a light device you can carry around without battery worries, and start reading the news without having to read documentation, worry about crashes, finding a hot spot, or having to squint to see the print. Like a real newspaper.