What are you doing inside? Good day (here anyway) to cut the grass and fire up the BBQ for the first time. Realizing now that we have EV-DO again I’ll be able to do some work outside away from home and office and am looking forward to that this spring and summer. Also realizing tech news can be very cyclical like the first grass cutting of spring. We see some of the same stories repeating themselves, don’t we?

Example: the top story on Techmeme on this blue sky, grass cutting friendly Sunday is a topic that’s already been blogged to death: newspapers are dying. It’s been reignited by:

InfoWorld, the elder statesmen of weekly technology magazines, will fold its print edition, Sam Whitmore’s Media Survey reports. InfoWorld, owned by IDG publishing group, will live on online. The announcement is due out Monday.

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.

I remain curious how people like Mathew Ingram who writes for the Globe feel about these newspapers are dying stories:

Are newspapers in trouble? Sure they are. And I would definitely agree that there hasn’t been enough thinking about (or investment in) the future from many newspapers, although I would argue that the Globe and Mail has been doing more than some of its competitors.

It has to suck being in the trenches on this one but I believe that newspapers still provide an important service, just they need to move the bulk of their published energies to the internet which some are wisely doing. A local printer regularly laments how the printing business has changed. He doesn’t do a lot of the same type printing jobs he used to do because, well, everybody has a printer hooked to their computer.

Maybe we should talk about the cyclical nature of news and the smell of freshly mown grass. It’s no wonder traffic starts to dip off this time of year. People get tired of reading bloggers writing about the same subjects. Or maybe this is just a coincidence that this topic was being heavily blogged a year ago when Knight Ridder was going through some hard times?

Newspapers as we know them will change — everything on this earth changes, that’s the way it goes — but print media isn’t going to die as long as people like going outside, sunning on their lawns at decks and reading a flexible, non-power absorbing novel. My wife would much rather read print books than eBooks. It’s people like her that will keep print alive for many years to come. Me? I like reading electronically but with the sun beating down I’ll admit that print is easier on the eyes and still prefer print outside in direct sunlight situations.

Time to go back outside. Newspaper reporters could use a break. I could use a tan. You?

Did this post make you go hmm?

Maybe Related Posts (plugin generated)

• No bailout for the P-I, web-only fate
• Why subscribe to newspapers any more?
• Knock it off tech writers, Spring is about life not death
• Doomsday prophecies for local newspapers?
• Yahoo courts Newspapers with ad and content deal, also forms alliance with answers.com
• $4 per gallon for gas this summer, say some experts