I have a subscription to the New York Times. I read it from front to back (except for sports) every day. I can’t imagine not doing so. If the Times folded, I’d subscribe to something else. I’ll occasionally look at the headlines of the Drudge Report or the Huffington Post but IMHO, web format removes much of the substantial reporting and coverage you find in hard copy. I feel similarly about television news.
But at least according to circulation numbers, a lot of people don’t feel the way I do.
So for people who have given up on newspapers, why?
Do you like television or internet sources better? Not interested in current affairs? Don’t want to pay for a newspaper?
I stopped taking the newspaper because the cost outweighed the benefit. Upwards of $500 a year I could do other things with, and almost nothing I couldn’t get online, on TV, or on NPR.
I have deep-seated memories of when we used to subscribe to the paper when I was younger and the papers would stack up nearly hip-high before they ever got taken out. Though I know I would be more timely, that image keeps me from subscribing now or probably ever.
I don’t want a paper every day but I like to read one when I eat out. I buy one and then, when I’m done, I leave it for someone else to read. It makes me feel good to know that others get to enjoy it. Or maybe someone has left one for me to read, which is nice too.
I read the ever-shrinking local rag every morning, out of sheer force of habit, for the comics and local news stories. I can’t be bothered reading online, it’s faster and easier to skim the actual newspaper. Though I do listen to the first 10 minutes of local newscasts on TV, when it’s on, for weather and traffic updates. And to hear if they caught that panty-strangler hiding out in the woods down the road…
Because everything you read in the newspapers is at least 3 days old. Anything I see in the paper, I have already known about for so many days that it is a waste of ink, trees, and fuel to deliver it.
I used to read the paper when I traveled on the subway but that was only because I was commuting in the other direction in the morning, so there was always tons of room on the train.
I stopped once I commuted like everyone else and there was no room.
I find the news in the papers SO old that it’s pointless. And the additonal info they have is just commentary. I don’t care to read about so and so who has an opinion and obviously slept with someone to get that column 'cause he’s constantly writing factual errors and missing the point of things.
Because everything you read in the newspapers is at least 3 days old./QUOTE]
You can, quite often, say the exact same thing about the evening news on TV.
I used to subscribe to a paper when I was working fulltime, but when I went back to school (actually, the year before, when we changed provinces), I gave up the subscription and didn’t sign up for another one. I love reading the newspaper, but that, for me, involved settling in at the table with breakfast and reading the whole thing in the morning before work. I could do it that way, because I worked later in the day (10am start). Now I don’t have the time for it. I also don’t have the same kitchen table - the one we use now is much smaller and it would be more of a hassle to lay out the paper while eating.
I read the news online several times a day, usually to kill time between classes.
Pretty much what everyone else here has said. Why buy the New York Times when I can get all the same articles online free? …Plus those of the Washington Post, the LA Times, the Boston Globe, the Times of London, the Guardian… My internet access is already included in my rent; no way am I going to pay extra for a hard copy that will be a pain to recycle every day.
I read some the physical paper every single day when I was growing up. I’m amazed how quickly the habit disappeared.
The World and National News in the Inquirer has been online in a hundred different places already.
Other than the scores (which are available elsewhere), the sports section is endless and repetitive commentary. The debate about whether the Eagles should keep Donovan McNabb is going on 10 years now so I think I have got the pros and cons down.
Don’t read the classifieds/funnies.
Don’t read the editorial page.
The local section carries a fair amount of human interest crap and I couldn’t care less.
Don’t read the television/movie/restaurant/club reviews.
Overall, for the teeny, tiny little bit of local/state news coverage that I would read, I would probably pay about a dime a day rather than the 75 cents they charge right now.
I read The Christian Science Monitor online, as well as the BBC online. I occasionally will read an SF Chronicle for local gossip as color value. But it has always, aside from gossip, been crap. But the NYT, WP and now even the Wall Street Journal are full of crap and exist mostly as platforms for their political commentators (at least to this out of towner) and it creeps into their news pages. The WP went to hell after Katherine Graham gave up control and the NYT was noticeably full of shit during the Clinton years with Wen Ho Lee and China spying stories that appeared to be fabricated out of whole cloth and then turned out to be: fabricated out of whole cloth. The Judith Miller bullshit stories on WMD were unredeemable warmongering lies fully worthy of Joseph Pulitzer and WR Hearst at their worst and carried on under the watchful eye of an encouraging editorial staff. The stink at NYT is from the same source as it is at the Oakland Raiders: the owner in charge doesn’t give a shit about anybody’s opinions but his own.
The Wall Street Journal used to run a respectable news section, ruined only by a fascist editorial page. The creep of that editorial page onto the news is now quite noticeable.
Why the hell should I pay good money for newspapers that are demonstrably full of shit when I can get CSM and BBC for free and they have actual standards of objectivism even though they aren’t perfect. (CSM is rarely compromised and fix it when they are.) Adjust BBC for UK loving bias, which it does have, and its pretty good.
I have not given them up. I read 10 of them every week. I subscribe to a NYT-owned NC local daily paper, circulation 50k, delivered to the end of my driveway by 7 a.m. or I call to Wisconsin to report it is late. I get mailed to me subs to 4 one-day-per week papers and I purchase two more from coinboxes at my supermarket. I skip all of the sports pages. Oh, And I buy the Sat. issue of the Raleigh paper when I am near a vendor of it. The daily & Raleigh ones are for local/regional news and the puzzles. One mailed weekly is from former hometown. Others are for work-related info. I also get “The Week” for succinct national and international news (most informative of all sources). I also get the “Navy Times” newspaper. That’s 10.
I detest CNN except for coverage of crises. I have shifted from Brian Williams on NBC to Diane Sawyer on ABC most every evening, followed by BBC America for an hour unless I missed the previous night editions of **The Daily Show **and Colbert Report, then I may watch their reruns from 7-8 p.m. instead.
I switched from NBC Nightly News mainly because I detest Brian’s stating that they “will return this (Tuesday) night after the break” before EVERY one of their geriatric commercials, as if they think (or know) that ALL of their viewers have Alzheimer’s and don’t know that the program will resume after the GD ads! I change channels for EVERY commercial during the newses but it’s bizarre to see the same GD bone/boner/cholesterol/real pony/bike in small box one on every one of the 3 network news programs, often AT THE SAME EXACT TIME. But I mute them anyway if I cannot avoid them.
I read the newspaper at the cafe, but most of the places round here have two or three available for all customers, so I wouldn’t count as a whole person for the circulation figures. Mind you, that’s been the case for a while…
I would never get a subscription, for the “millions of tonnes of paper to recycle” reasons cited above, and I’m not going to get through a whole paper every day anyway.
I only recently gave up on newspapers. I did so because I was wasting my time reading half-assed articles. Even if the quality has not changed for any given paper, their competition has. There are sources that are more timely (cnn.com, aggregate sites etc.) and there are sources that specialize in whatever the subject is (IT, financial, science etc.), providing better analysis. For any local news, there is a local 24h news network run by the cable company with the local major paper.
I used to get the Lansing State Journal here in Lansing, MI but I found I spent most of my time getting angry at breakfast time. I’d read things I knew were blatantly false, or find short sighted conservative opinions in so-called ‘objective’ reports. I could only read how evil our democratic state legislators were for so long before I just couldn’t take anything the columnists or editors said seriously. Also, the letters to the editor page just made me worried that I lived within a short driving distance of such racist, sexist, and homophobic nutjobs that I started to lose faith in the analytical mental capacity of my fellow man.
So to save myself from an early heart attack (I’m only 25 years old), I decided it was best to just get my news elsewhere. Now I just stick to the Daily Show and threads I read here.
I love reading the paper. I read the Boston Globe avidly (and went into mourning when Ellen Goodman retired) Thing is, although you can get “print” news online, most of the articles aren’t written with a lot of “meat” The quality of the " on the spot" web reporting has gone WAY down.
There’s just something fun about reading " unplugged" Wish more people agreed instead of thinking " Oh I gotta know about news THE SECOND it happens!"
I also love that you can use it for starting a fire, using it for craft projects (paper mache anyone?)
PLUS, you can save it to commemorate important events. I saved the Sept 11th ones as well as the Red Sox victory one.
While I don’t doubt print newspapers are guilty of the above, the inference that web content has greater journalistic integrity is silly.
Can’t comment on the sports section but yes, as a general rule I agree with this sentiment and it’s why I keep on reading actual print. With some exceptions, the difference between news delivered via web and news delivered via print is, IMHO, as large a gap as you would find between a children’s picture book and Pulitzer winner