newspapers

[SteveP]

interesting was the recent sale of the boston globe including all its affiliates ( web sites, etc ) for $70m.
the price of a decent ball player but not superstar... and the sale of the washington post at the same time for $250m
leads me to this question:
how many of you actually pay for and get a physical newspaper to read?
might be good to add how old you are.

i am 64. i pay for a daily paper* and read several others online. the rate for the globe has gone up rather dramatically over the last few years but i feel i should support it because they have done a lot of work exposing stuff...

it looks to me like printed papers are the wagon wheels of the next 25 yr.

* notably as today i have to bring 2 bags of them to the recycler.

[Jonathan]

We went from daily to weekend about 5 years ago and dropped it completely 3 years ago. As the business model of running and selling papers has changed, the Orlando Sentinel has responded by having less real journalism. They are dead to me. I get my news online now. I'd consider paying, but so far haven't felt a need, though I do support NPR. I'm 43.

[Dallas Tex]

For most of my life I subscribed to & read NYT and the Washington Post. And to a lesser extent the Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, DMN, and the LA Times.

The best part of the week was Sunday morning, going through the Sunday editions spread across the bed with a cup of coffee.

imho the concept and existence of the paper-of-record, whose standards & work were beyond reproach, left the building about 15 years ago. On an emotional level, I hate that the current state of the industry is a slow death spiral.

Currently I subscribe to zero papers.

[Zimmermanbicycle]

I turned 50 today and get the LA times daily and read the NY times daily online after 10 years of home delivery.
-Eric

[znfdl]

I read all of my new online from various web sources. I also try to receive as many magazines as possible in electronic format.

Additionally, approximately 90% of the books that I read are in electronic format. Love my kindle.

[Matthew Strongin]

I read a few online or on my phone, but haven't had a physical newspaper delivered since I was in college. It's been all online since then. I will pick up a newspaper at the corner from time to time when I need to dry out a pair of wet shoes, though. I'm 35.

[robin3mj]

I'm in my mid 30s and have never subscribed to a paper. Grew up with the Newark Star Ledger in our house, and the NYTimes in Sundays. I read my allotted 10 free stories in the Times on the web (plus a bunch more via RSS readers etc) and occasionally will pickup the Sunday edition, but last I checked it was something like $6.

If I moved back to the NY area I might get a daily paper again,but mainly only for the NY sports coverage. Though even that has seen its value surpassed by the blogs these days.

[deepsix]

I read the Nyt on my phone everyday. I do subscribe to m-f delivery but I get them delivered to the shop and I've never opened one. The cost of delivery m-f is cheaper than just Sunday and comes with unlimited online access on phone and tablet. It's cheaper to throw away the paper every day than subscribe to their tablet and phone apps. Dumbest pricing structure I've ever seen. I'm 29.

[znfdl]

I read all of my new online from various web sources. I also try to receive as many magazines as possible in electronic format.

Additionally, approximately 90% of the books that I read are in electronic format. Love my kindle.

I left out that I am 52 and grew up reading the Boston Globe on a daily basis. Later I switched to the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal; now almost everything I read is electronic.

[liv2bike]

We went from daily to weekend about 5 years ago and dropped it completely 3 years ago. As the business model of running and selling papers has changed, the Orlando Sentinel has responded by having less real journalism. They are dead to me. I get my news online now. I'd consider paying, but so far haven't felt a need, though I do support NPR. I'm 43.

Agree 100% Jonathan. I don't even consider the Sentinel a newspaper anymore. I bum it off my neighbors though when I need to use it to mask something off when I paint. About the only thing newspaper is good for anymore.

We have never had a newspaper subscription. We are in our mid-30's. Get all our news on-line through various feeds. Options. We will buy one on occasion for my wife who likes to clip coupons every now and again.

[sk_tle]

We went from daily to weekend about 5 years ago and dropped it completely 3 years ago. As the business model of running and selling papers has changed, the Orlando Sentinel has responded by having less real journalism. They are dead to me. I get my news online now. I'd consider paying, but so far haven't felt a need, though I do support NPR. I'm 43.

Same sort of experience here.

[davids]

Those of you who don't pay for journalism: You are going to get exactly what you pay for. You think a bunch of bloggers on social media are doing journalism? God help us...

I'm 52 and I value good journalism - the product of fact-collection, analysis, good writing, careful editing - and I pay for it. My household has digital subscriptions to both the New York Times and the Boston Globe. I read them both daily. The NYT has managed, so far (and with occasional, spectacular lapses), to maintain the high standards I value. The Globe is faltering, but after I dropped my subscription for a couple years I found I was missing a big chunk of information and analysis on what is happening in my community. I am hoping my few dollars a month will help them sustain. Whenever I get too critical of The Globe's quality, I visit another city and am horrified at the hollowed-out husks I see on the newstands there (Chicago and DC are still exceptions.)

(as an aside... The NYT digital pricing model is silly - My Sunday home delivery subscription gets me 24/7 digital access for less than a digital only subscription. We give our paper to the neighbors so it won't go to waste. Who over there is paying attention to this stuff?)

I have a lot of friends in the business - The Globe; The Times; Bloomburg; and the Sun-Times. The people I know are professionals who care deeply about what they do. They're scared and discouraged but they keep showing up, keep doing the reporting, thinking, writing, and drawing that they believe matters. I just hope we all value it enough to throw them a couple of bucks for their effort. Otherwise we'll be stuck with TV "news" and angry bloggers with agendas.

[Dallas Tex]

4) Print yesterday's news.......

This is THE problem. Twitter gets you news seconds after the event.

If anyone thinks that this moment in time is just a low point in the business cycle of newspapers, I would say they are wrong.

The readers (and the reason to advertise in a paper) gets older every year and is not getting replaced with new younger readers.

The time of important, big newspapers has passed.

[Matthew J]

This is THE problem. Twitter gets you news seconds after the event.

If anyone thinks that this moment in time is just a low point in the business cycle of newspapers, I would say they are wrong.

The readers (and the reason to advertise in a paper) gets older every year and is not getting replaced with new younger readers.

The time of important, big newspapers has passed.

While I certainly agree the print era has passed, sure hope you are wrong about the passing of the news paper altogether.

Instant reports on Twitter and other on line sources are as often wrong or misleading as not. Investigative reporting takes a commitment to retain the best professionals with available resources to find and follow through on leads and alternative angles to come up with the full story. Many of the start up online news sources either cannot or do not want to go beyond flashing a photo or video with a caption.

Over reliance on sound bite news yields some remarkable disconnects between the public and reality. Case in point today's Krugman column on a google poll where the majority thought the current federal deficits continue to increase when they are actually decreasing.

[Jonathan]

There is an old saying that if the railroad companies would have known what business they were really in they'd own the airlines today. That statement is fraught with problems and non perfect links but the idea is sound. The business is not papers and pulp and delivery, its delivery of media content. It's Fox, its Sky, its Disney and a few others. They all owned traditional media and were early in making the changes.

[lukasz]

I'd have a daily subscription if I weren't a grad student living in NYC (bye bye $$$. Also I'm giving up that info as my age). There's a lot to be said for sitting down with a paper. We read the news to get an idea of what's going on. It isn't life or death. My news can age a bit. Kind of annoys me that they changed the paper size of the NYTimes a few years ago. Some places in Europe you still get the big one (IHT). I distinctly remember trying to read one in the middle seat of an airplane a few years ago.

One nice thing about paper is that you can't edit it after the fact. Website news makes for sloppy journalism. Check the headline of a NYTimes story against the original headline contained in the URL (which is the original title of the story when they hit "post"). You get some doozies sometimes.

[j44ke]

Twitter is not journalism. In fact, it is the complete opposite.

What newspapers do well is act as the fourth branch of government from the ground up by writing complex analysis of the machinations of power that lead to subversion of the intent of citizens or the laws of the land. Note carefully that the weaker and less viable papers get as a business, the more brazen and blatant the activities of governments become. The Internet by definition marginalizes even the best reporting, because only people with a computer AND an Internet connection can read it. A paper can be read by every single person who sits down on a park bench in the middle of Central Park for as long as that paper sits there. And believe me, people still read newspapers that have been sitting on a park bench all day long and passed along from person to person to person. The Internet may be shrinking the world in some positive ways, but it is shrinking the world in negative ways as well.

[lukasz]

There is an old saying that if the railroad companies would have known what business they were really in they'd own the airlines today. That statement is fraught with problems and non perfect links but the idea is sound. The business is not papers and pulp and delivery, its delivery of media content. It's Fox, its Sky, its Disney and a few others. They all owned traditional media and were early in making the changes.

I just wish the railroad in the USA hadn't been privatized/deregulated. Hey kind of like the airlines. Now look at both of those industries. The state is good for some things ;)

[Jaq]

Get the Sunday-only LA Times, and then almost exclusively for the coupons. I'm sure there are plenty of coupon sites on the web, but the Zen of clipping is not to be easily dismissed.

If you want to crackdown on social unrest:
1. Cut cellular services
2 block social media sites
3. send in agitators to cause problems
4. then send in the police to restore order.

-D

Or provide people with so much WWE, The View, Teen Mom, Reality Tattoo Shop shows, the Kardashians, Downton Abbey, Type II diabetes, Youtube cat vids, internet p-rn, Angry Birds and other mindless distractions that they just don't give a damn.

[ThomasRZ]

NY Times delivered to my door seven days a week. I am 33.

I have an obligation: I have an MS in journalism.

I get enough computer time in at work (not in the world of journalism, sadly) and the last thing I need more of is screen time. The paper edition is beautiful and perfect.