Why subscribe to newspapers any more? |
Loading ...Knight Ridder earnings are down over 50% from last year, citing slow ad sales and high interest costs, via The News Tribune: “Knight Ridder earned $28.4 million, down from $60.5 million a year ago.”
After reading this I stopped to think why I’d ever want to subscribe to any newspaper today. What could be gained from reading one regularly that I couldn’t get from the web?
It’s a sad reality for print newspapers, but the hole is dug six feet down, the headstone has been delivered and the coffin has been lowered. A lot of the content in newspapers is still worthwhile, but with the immediacy and technology of the internet, before the news is printed most is already outdated.
You might see the big name columnists selling papers, but even fandom in an obsoleted medium has its limits. The New York Times will be one of the last behemoths to fall but down it will go too. We can get all melancholy about it or accept the reality.
Why should anybody subscribe to print newspapers any more?
Local news? Nope. Sports? Nope. Classifieds? Craigslist and eBay. Sunday comics? Ok, maybe, but there’s plenty of comics and cartoons online. Coupons? This might be the only logical reason left, at least that I can think of, but can enough coupons be clipped and used to save the cost of the paper? Sentimental value could be another reason.
Also, what if you are on vacation and don’t have the neighbor pick up your paper or temporarily suspend the service? Talk about an instant “come burglarize us” sign. [sigh] so many reasons not to have the newspaper delivered.
Once upon a time I remember my stepmom spending huge amounts of time carefully snipping out coupons and deals from the newspaper and digesting every article flipping around getting her fingers all inked up navigating the maze … see B7, see E9, see H4 … almost like a game of Battleship. I suppose us netizens do something similar through hyperlinks but it’s much, much faster and no inky hands.
Out of work … really?
I do feel for the many people employed by the newspaper, the reporters and journalists but they haven’t been obsoleted. The writer types should be (and many are) fueling the online newspaper sites, blogging and joining the 2006 revolution. Designers can take their skills online. Lots of ugly websites, including this one, according to a friend of mine who looked at Hmm recently.
As for how to pay reporters and journalists for the big stories? Same street, different house: ad revenue. It just means instead of businesses taking out huge half page and full page print ads, they allocate those dollars online. This is nothing new, it’s been happening for years and has been accelerated by successful contextual ad programs like Adsense. It seemed ironic to me that Google would try (and fail so far from what I’ve read) to attempt to spread its Adsense brand outside the web and into print and radio.
Maybe someday a new and better medium than the internet will present itself for spreading the news and then we’ll need to switch gears again. Rest in Peace, print news, it was nice knowing you. TV news could very well be next …
Am I missing something here? Is there something incredibly valuable about newspapers that can’t be found on the web faster and in more depth? You can read the newspaper on the plane while it’s taking off and yet you can’t use your portable device to read the news, I suppose. Undoubtedly there are other pros to newspapers, but they are dwindling. Do any Hmm readers still subscribe to print newspapers? Why? Why not?
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Generation gap. I subscribe to Business Journal but that’s about it. All news is online only. Older people seem to like the paper still. That will dwindle as the younger generations get older since most people get their news online now (young generations).
Eventually TV will also go the way of the Internet. I’m so proud of Adult Swim for actually pushing online streaming. Now THAT’s the next generation thinking!
Comment by darkmoon — April 18, 2006 @ 11:09 am PST
We only subscribe to one paper, but the delivery frustrations might end that. Full story here (with a link back).
Comment by Sterling Camden — April 18, 2006 @ 1:04 pm PST
Funny - I like your website design a lot, actually - maybe I am the only one?
Oh yeah, I still subscribe to the newspaper - can’t tell ya why, but I enjoy reading the paper still!
Comment by Matt Wardlaw — April 18, 2006 @ 1:57 pm PST
Thanks for the note of confidence, Matt. This site was actually designed and implemented by a professional designer in 2003. Along the way I have made code tweaks here and there and the CSS has gotten rather ugly for those peeking and does need some work (but that stuff wouldn’t impact the current design, just the source code that has gotten a bit messy).
I’m biased but I think this is one of our better looking sites (and thus agree with you) which I pointed out to my friend (she agreed after looking over some of our other sites, BTW, most of which were designed by a total non-designer: me). I’m not sure exactly what she disliked about this design. Was it the different font types on the front page? The three column output on the main/category pages? I probably should have asked for further clarification.
If Hmm does have an update and/or attempt to enhance the design somehow, I’d be very concerned about it being a new Coke story. Got other sites that need a facelift much, much more than this one. I kind of like people getting used to a certain site looking a certain way.
BTW, listened to the April 9 show with Ringworm, that was off the hook!
Comment by TDavid — April 18, 2006 @ 2:27 pm PST
And then there are *fine* publications like The Chronicle (Lewis County) that want to charge you $105/year to get the print AND see the same content on-line. You can’t see much of any on-line content unless you are a print subscriber. Even the Daily Zero in Oly gives you full on-line content free. Nothing is more annoying to me than (Headline)
“Crash kills small child
SATURDAY INCIDENT: Accident injures four others” … click for the story and get “Subscriber access only”
Even better… Restaurant Inspection Scores… subscriber access only. Now THAT makes sense. What if I already used Wednesday’s paper in the bird cage? Good-bye Chronline, Hello e-coli.
What is the point of them even having a website?
Comment by Kathryn Brenner — April 18, 2006 @ 2:35 pm PST
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Trackback by StrayPackets — April 18, 2006 @ 4:02 pm PST
haha - thanks for the Ringworm comments - that show was indeed off the hook. The rulebook went straight out the window for that one. But the old school stuff that we played, was definitely fun, for sure.
Comment by Matt Wardlaw — April 18, 2006 @ 4:33 pm PST
I say newspapers should give us what they are best at delivering and we regular Joes are not: decent stories, with investigative journalism. Use the web as well, but for the meaty stuff, do a digested version. Otherwise I can’t see a way out. I cancelled my newspaper subscriptions in 1993 because they had the wrong mix of news, and nothing I could not get off a Reuter terminal at university (and, later the web).
Comment by Jack Yan — April 18, 2006 @ 5:27 pm PST
Good advice, Jack.
Comment by TDavid — April 18, 2006 @ 7:17 pm PST
Thanks, TDavid!
Comment by Jack Yan — April 19, 2006 @ 1:42 am PST
I will agree that the Web offers a wealth of information, but depending on it for news seems to be very restrictive and time-consuming. Do you have favorite sites for general news? Do you keep them because you agree with what they present? Isn’t that limiting? Not all newspapers that have web sites charge for access, and that would seem to offer diversity in content. Does anyone have statistics that point toward which papers are successfully integrating print and online services — by that I mean not losing money on their online divisions?
Comment by Mike Davis — September 12, 2006 @ 9:17 pm PST
Hello Mike - good questions, let me see if I can take your points one by one.
“depending on [the web] for news seems to be very restrictive and time-consuming”
No way. RSS makes finding news by both date and relevancy (keyword) a snap
“Do you have favorite sites for general news?”
news.google.com, topix.net
“Do you keep them because you agree with what they present? Isn’t that limiting?”
Since they are aggregators they bring all different kinds of publications. Unlike a newspaper which shows me one story and one point of view, I can see the same story reported many different ways and different angles, which I think makes it less limiting.
I don’t have any statistics for online news vs. print news beyond what’s offered above. I’m sure if you run some Google searches you could come up with something on that.
Comment by TDavid — September 12, 2006 @ 9:50 pm PST
[…] I’m not sure who this deal helps more, a print newspaper business moving (begrudgingly?) to the web or Yahoo. And why are they using ads from Yahoo Local and not Yahoo Publisher? We still don’t subscribe to any newspapers, you? […]
Pingback by Yahoo courts Newspapers with ad and content deal, also forms alliance with answers.com » Make You Go Hmm — November 22, 2006 @ 8:06 am PST
[…] Lots of bloggers are covering this again or anew, but rather than repeat my take, I’ll point to last year’s post on the same subject: Why subscribe to newspapers any more? Don Dodge indicates he wrote about this a year ago too. Cyclical I tell you, cyclical. […]
Pingback by The newspapers are dying meme must be a spring thing » Make You Go Hmm — March 25, 2007 @ 12:14 pm PST