OT:Mariotti quits - "Newspapers dead"

[trwi7]

The Journal Sentinel works great for house training puppies as well. No accidents in a month!

[jerrod]

so first hip hop is dead, now newspapers, what next?

should we be worried about indoor plumbing, or maybe gravity?

[MajorDad]

only women worry about gravity.

[trwi7]

only women worry about gravity.

[OzzyInTheLake]

I still consider myself to be youngish (22), and I am all over 5-8 different sports sites and 1-2 news sties every time I open my internet browser (makes checking my email time consuming), but I still enjoy reading newspapers.

Nowadays I basically only read newspapers for the opinion/editorial type articles anyway.

When I get back to Aus I'll get the paper delivered.. if only cause sitting with your laptop whilst taking a dump just isn't the same as having the actual paper there.

[Rockmaninoff]

You're going to project league pass internet onto the wall? That will be the ugliest collection of 8 inch pixels you've ever seen.

That's exactly what i want.

[zizek]

The big national newspapers should survive online but they have cut back and are becoming weaker all the time. The loss of dominant national newspaper and broadcast media with very extensive resources that were capable of establishing a consensus on the facts and removing a president in Watergate will be missed.

A diffuse media each of whose opposing view of reality is as good as the next will have a hard time getting a majority to agree on a set of facts that could remove a president who deserves it from office.

[bayrdbandit]

if only cause sitting with your laptop whilst taking a dump just isn't the same as having the actual paper there.

bingo.

newspapers aren't dead. this is a stupid argument. just because the tech world doesn't find a need for them, that doesn't proclaim their death. this would be a 40-50 year thing forecast at the very least. it's 2 generations away, no sooner. we may see smaller papers die off, but the biggies will linger for a long time to come.

[bigkurty]

50 years? I'd be shocked if newspapers were still around in 10-15 years. I work in an industry where one of my largest customer groups is paper mills. These things are closing left and right and its mostly due to declining paper and magazine subscriptions. In the last year alone, I know of at least 10 mills that have closed in North America and these mills are not small. Each Mill probably averages 500 workers. Now that may not seem too big but they are highly automated so those 500 workers at one mill can put out around 20-40 truckloads of material everyday on average. When it comes down to it, paper is just highly inefficient in nowadays. I think magazines will be around longer but newspapers will die a quick death in this country.

[bayrdbandit]

50 years? I'd be shocked if newspapers were still around in 10-15 years. I work in an industry where one of my largest customer groups is paper mills. These things are closing left and right and its mostly due to declining paper and magazine subscriptions. In the last year alone, I know of at least 10 mills that have closed in North America and these mills are not small. Each Mill probably averages 500 workers. Now that may not seem too big but they are highly automated so those 500 workers at one mill can put out around 20-40 truckloads of material everyday on average. When it comes down to it, paper is just highly inefficient in nowadays. I think magazines will be around longer but newspapers will die a quick death in this country.

maybe things are a bit different here... melbourne's two biggest papers have a combined readership of over two million people. the idea of them disappearing within 10-15 years is laughable. but then, the usa tend to set the trends for these type of things...

[unklchuk]

IMO, it won't be a lingering death. The disease is far along. Some newspapers will survive through diversification. Maybe we'll have print-on-demand papers through the Internet if enough folks still want their words on paper, but the traditional newspaper process is far, far too slow.

I think it's fairly likely there'll be a niche for alternative publications. At least, I hope so.

I get the Post-Crescent about 4 or 5 in the afternoon. The same news (virtually) is in convenience stores early in the morning of that day. (But I can't get a delivered copy then.) That means it was assembled the night before. By today's standards, that completely invalidates the Post-Crescent as a news source for me. And since they're a chain paper, they're not trying to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. I have friends who still talk about the local newspaper as relevant in their worlds, but those friends aren't young.




Newsweek and Time I find more interesting - not for news, but because they do a lot of take-a-broader-view-and-analyze pieces, a number of here's-an-interesting-concept-let's-look-at-it pieces, some good opinion pieces, and provide sidebars and extra depth to the breaking news that comes from elsewhere. Of course, I'm paying $2/year (on a subscription deal) for each of them, so anything they offer is appreciated.

[LISTEN2JAZZ]

maybe things are a bit different here... melbourne's two biggest papers have a combined readership of over two million people. the idea of them disappearing within 10-15 years is laughable. but then, the usa tend to set the trends for these type of things...

You may be imagining how long it will take 2 million readers to dwindle down to zero readers, but the publication will cease long before then. I don't know what subscriber number makes it a waste of time and money, but I would imagine that a drop of 1/3 would change the economics considerably.

[jerrod]

Newsweek and Time I find more interesting - not for news, but because they do a lot of take-a-broader-view-and-analyze pieces, a number of here's-an-interesting-concept-let's-look-at-it pieces, some good opinion pieces, and provide sidebars and extra depth to the breaking news that comes from elsewhere. Of course, I'm paying $2/year (on a subscription deal) for each of them, so anything they offer is appreciated.

i really like time also, i used to read it at work but my boss's subscription ended.

any tips on how to acquire a $2 subscription?

[ReasonablySober]

The appeal to papers isn't just the news, obviously, it's the portability. Read one with your coffee in the morning in the kitchen, on the bus or in a cab or on a train to work, sitting on the hopper, in a cafe on Sunday morning when you're wearing last night's clothes and you need something greasy in your stomach (the only time I read a physical copy of the newspaper), etc.

I think there's going to come a day when we'll see something like we saw in Minority Report. Digital newspapers that dynamically change. Make it so you can carry it in a brief case or under your arm. On the right material it could probably be rolled like a newspaper. I think that's what we'll see down the line.