As much as we can agree that journalism is the backbone of a democratic society, I’ve been rooting for the demise of actual newspapers for a few years now. I dislike reading them, I hate the ink residue they leave on my fingers, I don’t like seeing them lying on the ground, I don’t like paperboys (real, or the NES game), and I can’t stand the sound of some douchebag fussing and rustling with his NYT as he attempts to fashion it into a readable rectangle. Anyway, this guy has a great piece on the demise of newspapers that I think you should read. He goes pretty deep in his analysis: printing press, Aristotle, AOL, and brings up some of the great points about how the Intertubes have blown the newspaper to smithereens.
12:46 pm on March 25th, 2009
First thing I wanted to say is, “That was a good article”. But it really wasn’t an article, was it? I’d rather read it than the newspaper, however.
Second thing that I hate about my personal local newspaper: They won’t leave me alone. Two or three years ago we signed up to get the Sunday paper. Only Sunday, cause we like looking at the ads and leafing through, but sometimes wouldn’t get the time to even do that once a week. But every month we’d get a call from the paper, telling us they were going to give us the paper for free for a year since we were great subscribers, or some sort of similar deal. I’d politely tell them we weren’t interested, finally stating that if they kept calling I was going to cancel what little subscription I had.
They quit for awhile, then started up the calls again, so I canceled. I’m sad the newspaper industry is so hard up, but with those tactics I’m not too sad.
3:27 pm on March 26th, 2009
As a follow up, I just saw yesterday that the Christian Science Monitor is going to be giving up their print edition after 100 years I believe, to focus solely on online content.
Kerazy.