We only get the Sunday paper for the coupons.

It is sad to see the slow, hulking death of newspapers & even some magazines. I guess my generation will be the last to get their current events and other information from both online & offline sources. These days, I feel a bit anachronistic when I take a paper and a few magazines out to a cafe or park bench and just READ. I read the news in the bathtub, I read it on public transit, online at work or home, and I watch the TV when I can't get it in the other forms.

I am a self-diagnosed news junkie. ^_^ I will be sad to see small-town newspapers dry up and simply be replaced by the impoverished ad-rag from our nearest big city. I plan to go back to school in the Tacoma, Washington area; that means I could be getting all of my print news from either Seattle or Olympia, which skews just a tad further left and/or yuppie than I do.

Just like the auto industry, though, I can't make a definite decision if this is just an accelerated evolution of an industry or if it is just going to be a sad state of affairs for the future. It appears that we've resisted change for so long in a lot of areas of life that now change is being forced upon us & we're having a shared, global freak-out.

Support your local news, people. You don't have to agree with the opinions, but you should appreciate the fact that you're being addressed by local figures rather than someone who couldn't care less about what's going on in your community!

I'm a newspaper copy editor for one of the big news publishers. I produce a handful of weekly papers (and their Web sites) for communities in Wisconsin. They just shut down one of my papers this week, after 97 years in print. People in town weren't too happy about it. I just hope to keep my job as everything moves online.

I do support my local news. I read it online, though.

The thing is, newspapers have traditionally been an insanely profitable business. Successful, well-established newspapers were used to making a 20%, 25%, even 30% profit margin. Most businesses are happy to get by with a 15% profit. Now, in the post-Craigslist world, newspapers are adjusting to new realities, and they're not dealing with it very well. However, I think that the smart ones will find ways to bounce back, become leaner, and deal with the smaller profit margins. And by the way, Reaper, putting porn ads in there isn't such a bad idea. The LA Weekly and Village Voice do pretty well thanks to all their ads for hookers.

I do hope newspapers don't vanish completely, because they're still where most of the important stories really break. Everyone thinks that online news bloggers are the future of news, but think about it: where do bloggers usually "break a story?" By reading a tiny article on page B-23 of a newspaper, and then spreading it around the web, which eventually pushes it onto television and other newspapers. Do you think bloggers are going to start hiring local news bureaus and attending Department of the Interior press conferences and all that shit? Not likely. Newspapers, while they've been technologically eclipsed, are still the established system whereby people in power are held accountable. They have the experience and resources to do actual reporting and investigative journalism. (When they actually do their jobs, which is another story).

Besides, have you tried reading your laptop on the toilet?

An old thread on this topic...

It was a huge part of the reason for buying my first laptop.

Agreed. While the traditional newspaper may be dying a now accelerated death, without journalism there simply is no democracy. For all the problems of the mainstream media, by and large they are mostly independent with only an agenda of profit. Its very beneficial to us as citizens that political scandals sell newspapers. If they didn't, journalists wouldn't be able to spend time investigating them. I am very interested to see what form journalism will take in the coming century.

The newspaper where I have worked for the past 18 years just announced that they are selling their 4 downtown parcels of land to raise cash. This is after two sets of layoffs this year. Since I started working there, the newspaper has gone from being grossly overstaffed to woefully understaffed. Some days I feel it is a miracle we are able to produce a paper at all!

Newspapers probably would be doing better if they actually reported facts and not opinions. I live in a conservative area and we dropped the paper here because it was nothing more than democratic talking points. Wether you agree with the liberal agenda or not it does us all a disservice to claim to be impartial reporters when your anything but. I think the sad consequence will be having to gather news from sources from both the far right and left and trying to discern what the truth is. Like we all have the free time for that.

Got anything to back up your statement, or is this just the common complaint that anyone not leaning in my direction must be leaning against me? Link us to the paper or something.

Newspapers are well within their right to publish opinion. They get to do both, and there's no reason they shouldn't. I'm curious to see examples of how local reportage was "nothing more than democratic talking points." The Sports section must have been awfully confusing to read.

I think it would make the classified ads much more interesting.

"For Sale: 30 foot powerboat, ideal for smuggling illegal immigrants"

I just hope they can find an internet-based profit model, because this is one of those industries where the advantages of going digital are very clear.

Right off the cuff
Media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist

The problem is probably two fold

1) The news media delivers information (or claims to ). Information technology is outdating their delivery method

2) More and more journalists are letting their bias pollute the story. When you pick a political side, you alienate part of your audience. Journalists should learn from psychologists and take the judgment out of their statements.