Demise Of The Newspaper Business
I have to tell you, amigos. Reading a newspaper for me use to be as vital to begin my day as enjoying it with my coffee and cigarettes. Oh yeah baby! I slip back in time even now and remember how wonderful it was to go through these rituals every morning.
Naturally, the older I got it became necessary to quit cigarettes for health purposes. So let me advise the youth reading this that worrying over your health about smoking probably is more dangerous to your health than actually smoking - provided you quit smoking at around age 30 and don't have other medical issues that would be complicated by smoking.
As for coffee I've become a hardcore addict. I went from drinking that mud instant coffee to java heroin...espresso. However I keep it to 2 or 3 daily demitasses.
And then there is the newspaper. Naturally it can never compete cost-wise with the Internet. Printing on paper is expensive. Plus the amount of information available over the Internet is a billion times greater than in the thickest of national newspapers. No, certainly printed newspapers as we have come to know them are as dead as the dinosaurs I'm afraid. The biggest trouble they face is the newspapers are attempting to sell information the people don't care to read about or information that is outright lies for the purpose of manipulating public perceptions. Newspapers have stopped providing the whole truth while they search for reasons for declining subscription rates. They have failed to notice that the readers can get anything they want for free over the Internet including the truth.
However, don't underestimate the joy of reading a properly constructed newspaper. Sometime in the near future the technology will advance to permit very cheap electronic papers to be created. Here's why. Using a laptop to access information is a pain in the ass in many locations during your day. Sitting in your bathroom for instance - a natural location for reading newspapers - will burn your legs with a laptop sitting on them and you risk dropping your expensive toy on the floor during the process. On the plane, bus, train and metro it is also inconvient. Soon, a one page tablet will be made for around $10 bucks that you can hang in the bathroom. To get a subscription to the paper you would need to buy the tablet and that's it. You could take it with you on the subway. It would be lightweight and collapsable to a convient size for stowing away. It would be thin and could be rolled up like the old parchments after the town crier yelled his hear ye hear ye's. If you lost it replacing it would be cheap. It would be very cool except for one thing.
It's that truth thing. It's that thing about journalistic credibility. I figure if a regular person like Tomas can sort out what really happened on 9/11 and not even one newspaper has done so yet - then what's in it for Tomas to read your stories? It worries me. Everything the government has asserted thus far is easily disprovable and in many cases with undeniable scientific fact and the laws of physics. Do newspaper editors really believe kerosene can melt steel - in buildings but not jet engines? It's easy to establish the facts...sadly over the Internet and not from newspaper investigative journalism. It makes every newspaper writer in the nation appear either ignorant or worse complicit.
However, one of the national newspapers is going to start doing their jobs soon to save themselves. Too many have already gone down. This newspaper will be in a great position for the new technology and have the credibility to back it up too. For those who wait they will be doomed to the dust bin of history.
Naturally, the older I got it became necessary to quit cigarettes for health purposes. So let me advise the youth reading this that worrying over your health about smoking probably is more dangerous to your health than actually smoking - provided you quit smoking at around age 30 and don't have other medical issues that would be complicated by smoking.
As for coffee I've become a hardcore addict. I went from drinking that mud instant coffee to java heroin...espresso. However I keep it to 2 or 3 daily demitasses.
And then there is the newspaper. Naturally it can never compete cost-wise with the Internet. Printing on paper is expensive. Plus the amount of information available over the Internet is a billion times greater than in the thickest of national newspapers. No, certainly printed newspapers as we have come to know them are as dead as the dinosaurs I'm afraid. The biggest trouble they face is the newspapers are attempting to sell information the people don't care to read about or information that is outright lies for the purpose of manipulating public perceptions. Newspapers have stopped providing the whole truth while they search for reasons for declining subscription rates. They have failed to notice that the readers can get anything they want for free over the Internet including the truth.
However, don't underestimate the joy of reading a properly constructed newspaper. Sometime in the near future the technology will advance to permit very cheap electronic papers to be created. Here's why. Using a laptop to access information is a pain in the ass in many locations during your day. Sitting in your bathroom for instance - a natural location for reading newspapers - will burn your legs with a laptop sitting on them and you risk dropping your expensive toy on the floor during the process. On the plane, bus, train and metro it is also inconvient. Soon, a one page tablet will be made for around $10 bucks that you can hang in the bathroom. To get a subscription to the paper you would need to buy the tablet and that's it. You could take it with you on the subway. It would be lightweight and collapsable to a convient size for stowing away. It would be thin and could be rolled up like the old parchments after the town crier yelled his hear ye hear ye's. If you lost it replacing it would be cheap. It would be very cool except for one thing.
It's that truth thing. It's that thing about journalistic credibility. I figure if a regular person like Tomas can sort out what really happened on 9/11 and not even one newspaper has done so yet - then what's in it for Tomas to read your stories? It worries me. Everything the government has asserted thus far is easily disprovable and in many cases with undeniable scientific fact and the laws of physics. Do newspaper editors really believe kerosene can melt steel - in buildings but not jet engines? It's easy to establish the facts...sadly over the Internet and not from newspaper investigative journalism. It makes every newspaper writer in the nation appear either ignorant or worse complicit.
However, one of the national newspapers is going to start doing their jobs soon to save themselves. Too many have already gone down. This newspaper will be in a great position for the new technology and have the credibility to back it up too. For those who wait they will be doomed to the dust bin of history.
posted by Tomás Estrada-Palma at
6:37 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home