I pit Gannett...

[EKDS5k]

@Garfield226

Yeah, we get it, you love the Internet. Me too.

You are making a lot of assumptions:

You’re assuming someone has access to get something “off of” Best Buy.

You’re assuming someone has close to $200 to drop in one chunk.

You’re assuming someone knows how to use a netbook.

You’re assuming someone has access to local news for free via the Internet (not every newspaper is online, not every newspaper is free online).

You’re assuming that even if local news is available for free via the Internet, someone knows how to find it.

You’re assuming someone has a cellphone bill that offers a data plan.

Aside from not having $200 to spend all at once, find me someone under 30 who doesn’t fit the above criteria. No fair pointing to homeless people. My whole point was that newspapers are not keeping up with the times: young people aren’t buying them, and old people die, so their consumer base is shrinking.

@Kozmik

First, the major story was the tsunami (March 12, 2011). Then, the major story was the nuclear meltdown (March 13, 2011). The tsunami story was not “stale”; the nuclear meltdown story was not an “update”.

The point was you could get constant updates on both stories. For example, if at 3 am, when the paper was printed, the body count was 1000, by the time I actually read it in the paper at 7 am, the body count is 3000, and there’s been some aftershocks, and now they’ve had a chance to fly over the area and take pictures of the destruction. The stuff I’m reading in the newspaper is stale.

@Kozmik

So? Now they’ll just have a PDF of the newspaper like in the tsunami and nuclear meltdown example. Now it’ll be on an IPad. How many IPads will be trashed? How much electricity will be used?

Why would I download a pdf of the newspaper? There are hundreds of news sites that cover major stories and update as soon as they get new information. Using Google, you can just put in the story and get the latest reports instantly. And who the fuck trashes their iPad when they’re done reading the news? The amount of electricity it uses is tiny, and the unit itself will last for years.

@Kozmik

:rolleyes:

I don’t remember the last time I read an opinion piece and didn’t come away thinking that the author sounded like a rambling old man. And I’m 28, I’m not exactly in the “young person” demographic anymore.

@Kozmik

:dubious:

I’m not even sure how to reply to this.

@Kozmik

Or just remember where you left off. And your example of an article probably still existing online. Probably?! Do I have to mention 1984, hackers, link rot? You think you don’t have last week’s newspaper; you do, in the library, in the archives, ect. This will be moot once the newspaper companies upload a PDF of their newspapers (with backup copies archived for obvious reasons).

It’s still less effort and more convenient to leave a tab open than is is to skim through a newspaper until I find my place. And now you’re suggesting that taking a trip to the library is equal in effort to searching through Google?

You can argue about how much you love newspapers all you want, and how distrustful you are of the internet, but the fact is that newspaper readership is down, and it is specifically because more and more young people are getting their news from the internet. This isn’t something you can debate, it’s the way it is, and all my post was was an attempt to come up with some reasons for it.

[Frank]

@EKDS5k

And I’m 28, I’m not exactly in the “young person” demographic anymore.

[EKDS5k]

@Frank

And I’m aware I’m not quite old enough to be taken seriously by the “older crowd,” too.

[Lynn_Bodoni]

@EKDS5k

And I’m aware I’m not quite old enough to be taken seriously by the “older crowd,” too.

My daughter is older than you are. I’ll probably always think of people who are younger than my daughter as “younguns” until she hits 40 or so.

[Kozmik]

@EKDS5k

Why would I download a pdf of the newspaper? There are hundreds of news sites that cover major stories and update as soon as they get new information. Using Google, you can just put in the story and get the latest reports instantly. And who the fuck trashes their iPad when they’re done reading the news? The amount of electricity it uses is tiny, and the unit itself will last for years.

I don’t have time to have go though hundreds of news sites (at least not in a single day). It’s easier to fire up the Detroit Free Press on their website, go through the newspaper on the computer, and then leave for work. Gannett, by the way, owns the Detroit Free Press. And you assume (or at least Google assumes) that there is a story, that you know what story to search for, ect.

@EKDS5k

It’s still less effort and more convenient to leave a tab open than is is to skim through a newspaper until I find my place. And now you’re suggesting that taking a trip to the library is equal in effort to searching through Google?

You missed my point.

@EKDS5k

You can argue about how much you love newspapers all you want, and how distrustful you are of the internet, but the fact is that newspaper readership is down, and it is specifically because more and more young people are getting their news from the internet. This isn’t something you can debate, it’s the way it is, and all my post was was an attempt to come up with some reasons for it.

They are getting their news from Twitter.

[constanze]

@EKDS5k

Newspapers are obsolete, they just haven’t realised it yet.

1. They’re slow: I can read about a major story (say, the Japan tsunami) online at 9pm, and get constant, immediate updates all through the night and the rest of the next day. Why would I spend $1.50 the next morning to read information that is already stale, and then get no updates until the next morning?

And how many of those people who rushed online have any in-depth information, instead of just repeating the same thing over and over?

2. They’re wasteful: How many trees are used printing newspapers? How many people just toss them in the trash (or on the street or wherever) when they’re done reading? How much fuel is used by delivery people driving their routes every day?

You can make newspapers from recycled paper without felling new trees, you know. Our newspapers are made from 100% recycled paper.

And the internet isn’t “free” either - all those servers need power to run.

3. They’re out of touch: Editors and writers of opinion pieces are generally older. People in their 20s can’t relate to them.

That is, if it were true, a sad indictment of the younger generation, but not for newspapers. Newspapers should be about facts, not about being hip (That’s MTV or whatever for). If people “in their 20s” are still so immature that they are not able to “relate to” what a 40 year old opinion on development in the world is, then their cognitive skills are sub-par. A 20 year old can’t remember the cold war, a 40 year old can, therefore, the 40 year old will have a better historical perspective of “we’ve seen this before, and that happened then, and we would be smart to avoid that” whereas the 20 year old still believes the world was created at his birth and nothing happened before that.

4. They’re expensive: I can get everything I can get in a newspaper online, for free, if I know where to look.

And if it’s free, you’ll get what you paid for. To take your example of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan: how do you know that what’s being posted online is not the propaganda of the govt. / of TEPCO that everything is okay? Or the rantings of a tin-foil beanie guy? To get background information, you need reporters who live there and know reliable sources and have contacts - that costs money; you need indepent scientists or scientific journalists explaining background - that, too, costs money.

[constanze]

@EKDS5k

I don’t remember the last time I read an opinion piece and didn’t come away thinking that the author sounded like a rambling old man. And I’m 28, I’m not exactly in the “young person” demographic anymore.

If you really are 28 old, I’m sorry for you, because you sound like an angry 14 year old, not like a mature, knowledgeable, intelligent person at 28.

[constanze]

Deleted double post

[Frank]

@EKDS5k

And I’m aware I’m not quite old enough to be taken seriously by the “older crowd,” too.

I took your arguments seriously; I disagreed with some of them, but you made good arguments. But a comment like, “I’m not young; I’m 28!” I can’t take seriously. It shows that you lack perspective.

Anyway, everyone complaining about ads in the papers should have a field day today. You know you’re getting old when you get a twinge in your shoulder picking up the Black Friday ads. (With a sports section in there somewhere–still haven’t found it.)

[Justin_Bailey]

@constanze

That is, if it were true, a sad indictment of the younger generation, but not for newspapers. Newspapers should be about facts, not about being hip (That’s MTV or whatever for). If people “in their 20s” are still so immature that they are not able to “relate to” what a 40 year old opinion on development in the world is, then their cognitive skills are sub-par.

You’re not understanding his point at all. I’m 30 and I see the same things in my local op-ed pages. Old man rants about how certain politicians are ruining the city (because they’re spending money on library facilities and making business deals with some young punk who is younger than their kids [side note: said young punk is in his 40s and his business plan is supported by nearly everyone under the age of 60]). They’re also mad that this gay marriage thing is being allowed and that city officials are actually WASTING THEIR TIME (capped for their effect) performing “queero weddings… with HOMOS!”

And let’s not even get into the old man rants related to the Occupy protesters. (Hint: they’re all idiots who don’t understand how the economy works, unlike the noble Tea Partiers who are getting things done, or would be, if the queero HOMOS weren’t stopping them with their godless marriages).

This is what “young people” see when they open a paper and it’s partly why newspapers are dying.

[constanze]

@Justin_Bailey

You’re not understanding his point at all. I’m 30 and I see the same things in my local op-ed pages. Old man rants about how certain politicians are ruining the city (because they’re spending money on library facilities and making business deals with some young punk who is younger than their kids [side note: said young punk is in his 40s and his business plan is supported by nearly everyone under the age of 60]). They’re also mad that this gay marriage thing is being allowed and that city officials are actually WASTING THEIR TIME (capped for their effect) performing “queero weddings… with HOMOS!”

And let’s not even get into the old man rants related to the Occupy protesters. (Hint: they’re all idiots who don’t understand how the economy works, unlike the noble Tea Partiers who are getting things done, or would be, if the queero HOMOS weren’t stopping them with their godless marriages).

This is what “young people” see when they open a paper and it’s partly why newspapers are dying.

If that is what you see when you read a newspaper, you’re reading the wrong kind of newspaper, either a right-wing or low-quality newspaper. I’ve never encountered those type of rants you talk about on the opinion / commentary site of the newspaper.

There are good arguments for online newspapers: 20 years ago, if you lived in Podunk, or where on holiday in Italy (Mexico)… you were cut off from the news, unless you had enough money for expensive foreign papers subscription.

Today, you can read Spiegel intl., Süddeutsche, ZEIT, etc. on holiday in Italy or while living in Podunk, to get news from several sources, and to learn what happens outside in the bigger world.

The same goes for TV news, too: instead of relying only on CNN and their double self-censorship, you can go to BBC intl., Al Jazeera intl., Tagesschau und heute-journal with a simple click. It’s now part of the routine that during the evening news Tagesschau, the announcer will say “For more background on this topic, the colleagues of our online dept. have put together informaton at www. tagesschau.de”.

But in both cases, the news isn’t “free” and “instantenous” - it’s being researched, written and vouchsafed for by journalists who know their business. It’s financed partly by public fees (ARD, ZDF, BBC), by subscriptions (you get some stories, but need a user number for others) or with ads - but you know you can rely on the truth and accuracy of these stories because they come from a reputable source, unlike “stuff I found via google”.

During uprisings in foreign countries, our news often shows now videos made with cell phones and emphasises “These videos have been unconfirmed, because all journalists have been kicked out / denied access ; our reporters in country XY are working on verifiying them”.

Because both sides, the regime and the protesters, can easily edit or fake from whole cloth, a shaky cell phone video showing outrageous things (remember those “Iraqui soldiers throw babies out of incubators” stories during the Kuwait invasion? A lie mocked up by a marketing company. Good news companies uncovered that instead of just repeating it.)

[jayjay]

@constanze

If that is what you see when you read a newspaper, you’re reading the wrong kind of newspaper, either a right-wing or low-quality newspaper. I’ve never encountered those type of rants you talk about on the opinion / commentary site of the newspaper.

There are good arguments for online newspapers: 20 years ago, if you lived in Podunk, or where on holiday in Italy (Mexico)… you were cut off from the news, unless you had enough money for expensive foreign papers subscription.

Today, you can read Spiegel intl., Süddeutsche, ZEIT, etc. on holiday in Italy or while living in Podunk, to get news from several sources, and to learn what happens outside in the bigger world.

The same goes for TV news, too: instead of relying only on CNN and their double self-censorship, you can go to BBC intl., Al Jazeera intl., Tagesschau und heute-journal with a simple click. It’s now part of the routine that during the evening news Tagesschau, the announcer will say “For more background on this topic, the colleagues of our online dept. have put together informaton at www. tagesschau.de”.

But in both cases, the news isn’t “free” and “instantenous” - it’s being researched, written and vouchsafed for by journalists who know their business. It’s financed partly by public fees (ARD, ZDF, BBC), by subscriptions (you get some stories, but need a user number for others) or with ads - but you know you can rely on the truth and accuracy of these stories because they come from a reputable source, unlike “stuff I found via google”.

During uprisings in foreign countries, our news often shows now videos made with cell phones and emphasises “These videos have been unconfirmed, because all journalists have been kicked out / denied access ; our reporters in country XY are working on verifiying them”.

Because both sides, the regime and the protesters, can easily edit or fake from whole cloth, a shaky cell phone video showing outrageous things (remember those “Iraqui soldiers throw babies out of incubators” stories during the Kuwait invasion? A lie mocked up by a marketing company. Good news companies uncovered that instead of just repeating it.)

I hadn’t realized the depth of my grief for what American journalism once was until I read this.

[EKDS5k]

@Frank

I took your arguments seriously; I disagreed with some of them, but you made good arguments. But a comment like, “I’m not young; I’m 28!” I can’t take seriously. It shows that you lack perspective.

I think you misunderstood me. I wasn’t saying “I’m 28! Listen to me!” I was saying that I’m well out of my teens, and even I feel that way about newspapers.

@constanze

If that is what you see when you read a newspaper, you’re reading the wrong kind of newspaper, either a right-wing or low-quality newspaper. I’ve never encountered those type of rants you talk about on the opinion / commentary site of the newspaper.

There are good arguments for online newspapers: 20 years ago, if you lived in Podunk, or where on holiday in Italy (Mexico)… you were cut off from the news, unless you had enough money for expensive foreign papers subscription.

Today, you can read Spiegel intl., Süddeutsche, ZEIT, etc. on holiday in Italy or while living in Podunk, to get news from several sources, and to learn what happens outside in the bigger world.

The same goes for TV news, too: instead of relying only on CNN and their double self-censorship, you can go to BBC intl., Al Jazeera intl., Tagesschau und heute-journal with a simple click. It’s now part of the routine that during the evening news Tagesschau, the announcer will say “For more background on this topic, the colleagues of our online dept. have put together informaton at www. tagesschau.de”.

But in both cases, the news isn’t “free” and “instantenous” - it’s being researched, written and vouchsafed for by journalists who know their business. It’s financed partly by public fees (ARD, ZDF, BBC), by subscriptions (you get some stories, but need a user number for others) or with ads - but you know you can rely on the truth and accuracy of these stories because they come from a reputable source, unlike “stuff I found via google”.

During uprisings in foreign countries, our news often shows now videos made with cell phones and emphasises “These videos have been unconfirmed, because all journalists have been kicked out / denied access ; our reporters in country XY are working on verifiying them”.

Because both sides, the regime and the protesters, can easily edit or fake from whole cloth, a shaky cell phone video showing outrageous things (remember those “Iraqui soldiers throw babies out of incubators” stories during the Kuwait invasion? A lie mocked up by a marketing company. Good news companies uncovered that instead of just repeating it.)

I don’t even think you read my posts. I’ve been arguing in favour of getting news online this whole time. My whole point was that online, these websites are updated instantly, as soon as the stories are ready to go. And if there’s an update in a few hours, then that goes up too. With a print newspaper, you have to wait until the next day, and even then, it’s a few hours old.

[Kozmik]

@bmasters1

…not only in terms of USA Today, but also for what they have done to the other papers that they’ve purchased, like The Greenville News for instance.

Why am I pitting Gannett with regard to this paper, you might ask? Well, I used to like the News back when I was a boy: then, it had a good bit of meat on the bones, so to speak (IOW, the sections were bigger and there was a lot more content); it only cost 25 cents on weekdays, and $1.00 on Sundays. Nowadays, I’m not really feeling it; the paper (now a Gannett product) is wafer-thin (18-30 pages on weekdays, and about 100-120 on Sundays; a lot of other papers have the Sunday page count on quite a few weekdays, and more than that on Sundays). It also costs 75 cents now on weekdays, and $1.75 on Sundays, all for a paper that has very little to offer nowadays. To add insult to injury, being a Gannett product, it has one of the poorest layout schemes you could ever imagine in a newspaper; most big-city papers are much better than the News with regard to that. Also, the sports section is mostly recycled AP stories; no real writing to speak of.

What I like about USA Today is that they’ve got a page called Across the USA: News from every state. Although I am not a fan of USA Today, which is owned by Gannett, I like the idea that there is some businessperson who doesn’t have time to read big-city papers so they read this page in USA Today that features a small paragraph on each of the 50 states in the United States. See, their time is so valuable that they can only read one newspaper a day; however, their job is so important that they must read news from each state in the United States every day. That is the definition of cool.

And while you mention the poor layout, ironically, Gannett newspapers such as USA Today and the Detroit Free Press have an excellent E-Edition. Look, no paper!

Nothing in the USA Today from September 13, 2010 is stale. On the front page, in addition to a story about the Taliban using child soldiers and a story about the U.S. testing iris scan technology (*Minority Report * anyone?), there is a story with the headline “Trouble Ahead for the NFL?” (NBA lockout anyone?). My point is this: It is not enough to know that there is an NBA lockout; you also need to know that there could have been an NFL shutdown, in addition, or instead of, the NBA lockout.

Let’s see what else was in the news on September 13, 2010…

“Residents still shaken by Calif. pipeline blast”, “Tenn. flood victims face long road to recovery”, “Crews close to suppressing Colo. wildfire”

Someone cynical might say the residents have moved on, the flood victims have recovered, and the wildfire was put out. Someone who is not cynical might read these three news stories and conclude that day that the larger news story is that a lot was going on across the country yet, as Americans, we preserve.

And speaking of Minority Report and iris scan technology, look at this scene from Minority Report where the lede headline changes from “Mechanical nanodevice triumphs!” to “Precrime Hunts its Own!”. (All Headlines Must Be Written With Apostrophes In The Future!) My point is this: There will be two versions of the E-Edition of USA Today in the future - the Daily E-Edition and the Breaking News E-Edition.

So, for example, the person on the Metro reading USA Today would have decided to have the Breaking News feature turned on. They would then be able to get updates or Breaking News on the front page, and that’s assuming that the update warrants being featured, even for an hour, (what if there is other Breaking News in a couple of hours?) on the front page as Breaking News instead of buried on page 6A.

Thus, with the Breaking News E-Edition of USA Today we will make EKDS5k happy and with the Daily E-Edition of USA Today we will make constanze happy.

Finally, this is proof that Stephen Spielberg is a genius.

[Frank]

@EKDS5k

I think you misunderstood me. I wasn’t saying “I’m 28! Listen to me!” I was saying that I’m well out of my teens, and even I feel that way about newspapers.

I don’t think I misunderstood you at all. You’re saying that the opinons of “older” people are worthless to you, while not understanding that, at the age of 28, not only are you “young” to those of us who are in our 50s, you are, to those Facebook and Twitter fans you reference, “old”.

You lack perspective, that’s all. If you look around the world, you’ll find that most countries are run by people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. I’ll assume that their opinions are out of touch to you.

[SanibelMan]

For what it’s worth, I’m also 28, and I love newspapers so much that I work for one. I’ve stayed in the newspaper industry even after getting chewed up and spit out once. I can’t imagine doing anything else. But yes, newspapers are not as good as they were 10 or 20 years ago, and yes, chains like Gannett and McClatchy and Media General are a big part of the problem. But newspapers have squandered a lot of opportunities over the years.

This article in the Columbia Journalism Review (it’s long, like a lot of good journalism) tells the story of how the San Jose Mercury News, the newspaper most well-positioned to take advantage of the opportunity offered by the Internet, missed out on the opportunity to invest in its future by squirreling away profits and assuming that the future would be just as cushy as the past.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to stay in newspapers. My wife will be an LPN by next December, and hopefully within a couple of years, she’ll be making at least what I make now. If I lose my job, it won’t hurt quite as much then. But I really don’t know what else I could do for a living that would satisfy me like putting out a newspaper.

[EKDS5k]

@Frank

I don’t think I misunderstood you at all. You’re saying that the opinons of “older” people are worthless to you, while not understanding that, at the age of 28, not only are you “young” to those of us who are in our 50s, you are, to those Facebook and Twitter fans you reference, “old”.

You lack perspective, that’s all. If you look around the world, you’ll find that most countries are run by people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. I’ll assume that their opinions are out of touch to you.

Actually I pointed out in my next post that I was aware of that also.

[constanze]

@EKDS5k

I don’t even think you read my posts. I’ve been arguing in favour of getting news online this whole time. My whole point was that online, these websites are updated instantly, as soon as the stories are ready to go. And if there’s an update in a few hours, then that goes up too. With a print newspaper, you have to wait until the next day, and even then, it’s a few hours old.

I did read your posts, and that’s why I pointed out that your either-or dicthomy of “newspapers = print are outdated, old, cost money so nobody except geezers want them” vs. “online news are updated, hip, cool and free” is wrong, and pointed out the difference between news headlines and news reports, news done by journalists (whether online or on paper) or by some random guy on twitter etc.

It seems you don’t get how important proper research by journalists is, which is sad. Maybe you should read some real good newspapers - oh wait, they won’t be written in cool language you can relate to, because good news are written in serious language, which is like, you know, hard to understand for cool people. And thinking about how complex issues in the real world are could make your brain hurt or something. So just keep reading the “news” online you find with google, because only thing that counts about news is how current they are. Not accuracy, not background, not information vs. “two sides to each issue instead of finding truth, even if one side is a nutcake”, - all that matters is relating because the blogger is also hip and young, and how new the news is. Older than a day? Not of interest any longer!

Meanwhile, people able to understand longer paragraphs, not intimitated by complexity, interested in what’s really going on in the whole world, wanting to understand the background, not scared of the opinions of people with a wider view, will continue to read real newspapers, even if that costs money or if they come on paper.

[EKDS5k]

@constanze

I did read your posts, and that’s why I pointed out that your either-or dicthomy of “newspapers = print are outdated, old, cost money so nobody except geezers want them” vs. “online news are updated, hip, cool and free” is wrong, and pointed out the difference between news headlines and news reports, news done by journalists (whether online or on paper) or by some random guy on twitter etc.

It seems you don’t get how important proper research by journalists is, which is sad. Maybe you should read some real good newspapers - oh wait, they won’t be written in cool language you can relate to, because good news are written in serious language, which is like, you know, hard to understand for cool people. And thinking about how complex issues in the real world are could make your brain hurt or something. So just keep reading the “news” online you find with google, because only thing that counts about news is how current they are. Not accuracy, not background, not information vs. “two sides to each issue instead of finding truth, even if one side is a nutcake”, - all that matters is relating because the blogger is also hip and young, and how new the news is. Older than a day? Not of interest any longer!

Meanwhile, people able to understand longer paragraphs, not intimitated by complexity, interested in what’s really going on in the whole world, wanting to understand the background, not scared of the opinions of people with a wider view, will continue to read real newspapers, even if that costs money or if they come on paper.

I was talking specifically about print media being obsolete. Reputable online sources can do everything I’ve talked about. I can watch/read breaking news on, say, BBC’s website AS IT HAPPENS, rather than finding out about it tomorrow morning at 7am in the New York Times.

I mentioned Google for two things in particular: 1) As an excellent way to find old articles. If I want to know what the BBC had to say about the Japan tsunami, then I don’t have to go through their main website, I just put “bbc japan tsunami” into Google and it returns all their stories. And 2) for the news aggregator. Which collects news from around the internet. It’s not a news source by itself, it’s just an easy way to find news.

I didn’t say old news was worthless, or things that happened last week are no longer relevant. I said that for breaking news, the newspaper is worthless, because it only comes out once a day, and is printed hours before it’s read. I watched the Vancouver hockey riot as it happened (granted on actual TV, but I could have just as easily followed it online) and stayed with it until it ended. Can’t do that with a print newspaper.

My comments about young people not relating were specifically about opinion pieces, and how the writers tend to be of the older generation. I wasn’t talking about actual journalism, and it was a small supporting point of a larger argument.

I don’t get my news from blogs, or from twitter, or from comment sections. Though often I will read someone’s post on facebook, and they will either have a link to an actual news site, or I will use Google to find a real source and verify.

Really we’re arguing for the same thing. For some reason, I pointed out a bunch of flaws with print media (as in, actual, physical newspapers made of paper), and you responded by pointing out all this great stuff you can find online. I have tried my best to specify that I’m arguing specifically that “print media” (again, I’m talking about stuff that is actually made with paper) is dead, but you seem to have taken the one or two times that I just called them “newspapers” and assumed I meant all online newspapers, and then drew the erroneous conclusion that I get all my news from Twitter and blogs.

[Kozmik]

@EKDS5k

I didn’t say old news was worthless, or things that happened last week are no longer relevant. I said that for breaking news, the newspaper is worthless, because it only comes out once a day, and is printed hours before it’s read.

Good point. See my last post about Minority Report.