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Would You Ever Read A Newspaper Again?
from the dead-media-or-hope? dept.
Are newspapers over? Is there anything papers can do that would get you to buy them and read them every day? Is there any reason to preserve their form and function, any vital purpose they serve?
At this moment in media history, newspapers have never been more pressed to define themselves, or done a worse job.
All over the information spectrum, media audiences are fragmented, drawn to the timeliness, convenience and immediacy of cable news, and the Net and the Web.
Slow to grasp the implications of emerging information technologies like radio, TV, cable, then the Net and Web, papers have been asking themselves more or less the same questions for half a century now: what should we be? What do people want of us? And newspaper readers have been asking the inverse: do we need papers anymore? Is there anything in them for us?
One thing is obvious: the answer doesn't really lie in the focus groups and marketing sessions that have become a feature of newspaper industry planning. Nor does it lie in the proliferation of mostly boring online versions newspapers that, with few exceptions (the Wall Street Journal, the Minneapolis Tribune, the San Jose Mercury News, USA Today, the Boston Globe), divert resources, compete with their own hard-copy versions and make little money, at least so far.
The challenge for newspapers is the same one it's been for nearly a half century. It isn't technological. It's creative. They don't tell us things we don't know. They don't offer us good writing or strong opinion. They don't even have good comics any more. And their coverage of technology generally sucks. And profoundly so.
In the midst of the greatest information revolution in human history, it's hard to point to a single newspaper that has radically altered it's mission, content and appearance to keep up with the Information Revolution and the spread of digital information.
In recent years, newspapers have remained graphically impaired. They seem oblivious to the graphic revolution that has swept magazines and is spreading through the Web.
Papers continue to cover new media technologies and popular culture poorly, alienating young and future audiences. They have ceded good writing to magazines, publishing and websites.
Papers seem seem almost stupefyingly oblivious to the fact that they aren't in the breaking news business anymore. Fifteen to 24 hours after CNN and innumerable websites reported that George W.Bush would soundly thump John McCain in South Carolina, most newspapers reported the news on page one the next morning as if none of their readers had heard it before, despite the fact that almost all of them had.
As the Net and Web spawn ferocious and idiosyncratic commentary, democratizing opinion all over the country, newspapers cling to stuffy and elitist op-ed pages, where opinion is generally confined to a "left" and "right" and voice usually given to elite claques of pundits, academics, authors and CEO's.
Technology, perhaps the central social issue of our times - and without a doubt the biggest ongoing story in America and much of the world -- is spawning a host of significant issues of relevance to almost everyone: genetics, artificial intelligence, open source and free software (and social) movements, patent, copyright and intellectual content questions, nano-technology, super-computing, the runaway rise of the Net, the Web, and e-commerce.
How many of these stories make their way to the front pages of newspapers? Few, and then rarely. Newspapers are still mired in anti-deluvian and phobic notions about technology - is Johnny getting onto the Playboy website, is it safe to use your credit card online, are predators waiting to stalk your kids, are hackers waiting to invade your website, does the Net promote loneliness and isolation?
Newspapers are the scolds of the Digital Age, shrieking and clucking about a changing world (the Net, the Web, movies, TV shows, rap, hip-hop, kids today) like Temperance Ladies wandering into a bar.
The press will obsess on the semen on Monica Lewinsky's dress, but still won't take technology seriously. Newspapers still don't recognize that that the Net isn't a sex story or a business or cracking story, but increasing, the biggest story of our time.
In "Code," Lawrence Lessing of Harvard writes about the evolution of new laws in cyberspace. In "Hamlet On the Holodeck," Janet Murray of MIT writes about the emergence of new kinds of culture - gaming, MUD's, hypertext -- among the gifted geeks and nerds on the Internet. In "Genome," Matt Ridley writes about the staggering implications of the Human Genome Project. You will hardly ever see these issues on the front pages of newspapers, or anywhere inside.
Newspapers are also struggling to define evolving definitions of culture, leisure time, recreation and amusement. Opera, classical music, hard cover books, art museums are one kind of culture. But there are new kinds - elaborate and creative gaming and video cultures, creative coding, the booming business of Web architecture and design, proliferating weblogs (hives of individual opinion and expression), vast messaging systems and services like AIM and ICQ, collaborative global information-and-software sharing movements like Linux.
Few newspaper readers have even heard about these new kinds of culture. No wonder kids - especially geek and nerd kids -- have abandoned papers in droves.
This timidity and lack of risk-taking is astounding, especially for an industry that doesn't let a day go by without lamenting it's declining place in the world, and wondering what on earth it should do to compete with CNN'ism, Salon, and a plethora of other competitors.
It's hard to know what might work for papers, since there is no paper that has tried anything that could even remotely be described as radical change.
Is it too late? Do any of you read newspapers? Do you see a future for them? Is there anything they could do that would make you want to subscribe to and read them, either in hard copy or online form?
What do you think?:
Newspapers will not die. (Score:1)
history repeats itself (Score:3)
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
Sometimes papers are better than you think... (Score:2)
Large, national papers can only get maybe to a regional level of what's going on, and I can get that online (Yahoo, CNN, etc). Regional/local newspapers have more specific news (traffic pattern changes, news of the local buidling inspector taking bribes, etc), which is usually news you don't even get on the radio or local TV, since it is so local.
When I set up Yahoo for news, I have it set to the news that I want to see. However, that's not necessarily the news that interests me. Newspapers let me open the page, scan headlines, read the first few lines of an article to get context, and read it if I'm interested. I can do this on an entire page in just a few seconds. Doing the same amount of looking online can take a minute or two (load page, scroll past ads, read line, realize I don't like it, back, scroll to next article, click, load page, etc). Now multiply this times 50-60 pages, and you can see that newspapers give you the best overall view of news.
Here's my prediction: The Big Guys (NY Times, USA Today, etc.) all go online and give up the dead tree business. The strictly regional/community papers survive.
NEWs, not bias and not human interest (Score:3)
It is impossibal to be unbiased, but we want unbiased. NPR for instance is credited of having great news, but listen closely and you realise they are baised for big goverment - they tend to cut off those advocating cuts as soon as they can without sounding like cutting them off. One person I know puts it this way: He reads the Syndny (Austrila) paper, the London (UK) paper, and the New York Paper (US). He would read more if he could read more languages. Each paper has a bias, and this way he can at least cancel them out. Get togather with Those papers, and agree that each will put togather one section of "important issues" from their area. That secion will be run included as is in each paper, and must be made only of stories included in their paper. The goal is to get their bias exactly as they have it. Anti-US if that is what their bias is on the news. Don't let them write specail watered down stories for you, get the meat of the matter and include it in it's entirity.
Learn to seperate news for human interest. The Kennidy plane crash of last summer comes to mind. This nobody, who had never done anything made the front page, and was considered a great tragity above the dealth of a friend of mine. When you look at it, neither one had done anything news worthy, but one had parents who did do newsworthy things. (BTW, don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing him for not being newsworthy, that is his choice - there is nothing wrong with making it and I respect him for making that choice. But the fact remains he wasn't news worthy) Likewise we have the Diana/Mother Theresa deaths, one which outweighed the other. In fact both were human interest and neither were news. For that matter in the US a obsolete royality of anouther country is not news whatsoever. (Except that it would be in the london section if you took my advice of the last paragraph. )
Speaking of Mother Theresa, hsa anyone really examined the critics of her? I was brought up being told continuiosly that she was a saint despite religious differences. Latter I found some critcism in less trust worthy places that I can't quite discount because it adds up. REport those stories. News is not always nice to read, and your job is to present that side, even if unpopular. Assuming of course that it is true.
Try making the comic interesting. Calvin and Hobbes won't come back, but find other commited ARTISTs who can draw something interesting. Yes this is fun, but all work and no play makes jonny a dul boy as it were. There must be come artists out there with talent that you can give half a page a week to. (Note I said half a page a week. If a creative person can't create enough for something every day give them once a week. Your columists don't all write every day. My favoirte columnists appears only on wednesday and sunday.)
Remember filler isn't everything. If you have enough ads for 50 pages, but only enough news for 20 pages under the normal forumla then raise the ad prices until you get the same income from 20 pages of well researched news and the rest of the advertisers decide to go elsewhere.
It is impossibal to be unbiased. Ideally every story would be jointly written by two people with explictily different biases. Send a rebublican and a democrat to the Democratic national convention and give each half the space. (If you have the sapce send a socalist, libratarian too, but evetially you can't afford to pay that many reporters and you miss the little important things because each wants to cover the same big thing)
When the newspapers become relavant I'll read them, but the fact is most days what appears on the front page is filler. Maybe it is the biggest news story of the day, but it isn't really important.
On the demise of newspapers and friends... (Score:2)
After a moment's reflection, it seems obvious why CS is on such a spectacular decline. Its target audience is people in the market for computer equipment, a niche that websites, augmented by search engines, fills dramatically better.
News, unfortunately for newspapers, is another niche where the net has tremendous advantages over traditional print media. And, of course, the list goes on and on.
Newspapers are doomed to drop to at least a shadow of their former scale and influence. My advice to newspaper owners and editors: bail out while you can still salvage some of your investment in money and experience. Don't wait until the market is flooded with ex-newspeople and the money is gone.
Save a tree. Don't buy a newspaper today.
Of course I still read the newspaper. (Score:3)
Also, newspapers are a great filtering method. If I wanted to check up, say, the international news for the day, I'd be inundated with a flood of information. Yeah, CNN.com and other places do a great job, but newspapers provide an alternate source from a viewpoint that has at least a few hours to think about the story before posting it, and they know that it'll be almost 24 hours till anyone reads the story, so they don't jump to conclusions the same way TV news or web news often does.
And then of course there's the simple fact that it's much easier to lounge around the living room couch with a newspaper and breakfast than it is to do so with a computer.
Newspapers may change their format (Daily to weekly, more local news, etc), but they aren't going away anytime soon.
Discontinued my subscription (Score:2)
I do buy the paper in situations where I can't get to the Internet, like when I ride the train to work in the morning, and I still enjoy it. Longer, more in-depth reports can make a paper more worthwhile than a collection of articles on the Net.
It's sometimes claimed that books will become obsolete, but I'm sure they won't, because paper probably will always be a much better medium for delivering information than a computer screen with its damnable scroll bar. You can't scribble notes in the margin on your screen; you can't jam your thumb and index finger into two places you want to save; you can't fold it up and stick in your pocket and take it with you to the john. But newspapers will always have the great weakness of being a day behind.
Newspapers may have to become more like magazines to survive -- they'll need to publish longer, more researched articles with more depth than the daily news. These pieces will need more time to develop, hence requiring a weekly or monthly publication schedule rather than daily. But then, weekly and monthly magazines are already there, so the daily paper may really be on its way out.
We mustn't forget, however, that very many people still have no Internet access, and it will last a few years before the Internet is as universal as, say, television. That might keep the papers alive for a while.
Observations after reading the morning paper (Score:3)
1. Most web sites are incredibly juvenile in comparison.
2. There seems to be a glaring lack of knowledge and experience on many review-oriented web sites.
3. There's an odd tendency on the web for people to latch onto weird marketing-driven causes--Athlon, GeForce, MacOS--and act like developments related to these products are newsworthy. In a newspaper, an article like "Buick to Revamp Interiors of 200 Lineup" would be obviosly a phony advertorial type of article. But on the web those topics are legitimized into real news.
in defense of newspapers... (Score:4)
Newspaper and its alternatives (Score:2)
My 40 minute train ride every morning would feel that much longer without a newspaper.
For 35 cents, 5 days a week ($1.75), I get entertainment and information and news in one tidy little package.
Would I get a Pilot or some other similar device to read news when it becomes available?
Not a chance.
Newspapers, like I said cost me less than $2 a week. 52 weeks a year and I've only spent $104.
If I lose a paper, I won't get upset. I can buy another.
If I break a paper (rip, tear, mutilate), I won't get upset. I can buy another.
...and so on...
Mr Katz has the wrong question for commuters as I see it though. The correct question should be from the tech companies as in:
"What can we do to get a larger audience away from newspapers?"
Answers:
Make whatever it is durable and inexpensive.
-m
Wall Street Journal (Score:2)
The Wall Street Journal generally offers a quality of writing not generally found on the net, and I appreciate that. It's especially obvious to me on a daily basis, as my local paper is the Harrisburg Patriot, widely regarded as the WORST paper for a state capitol in the nation. Imagine U.S.A. Today, but much worse.
The WSJ has been around for a long time, but they fill a very different role than the average local paper. To a lesser degree, so do papers like the New York Times and the Washington Post. If anything, the local papers will go the way of the dodo in favor of the web (I know I get all my breaking news from AP/Reuters feeds).
That's my opinion, at least.
What do we want? (Score:2)
When do we want it?
NOW!
That's all the newspapers need to know. They need to stop cowtowing to corporate sponsors, they need to quit toeing the line for the government. They need to go out, INVESTIGATE, and report. Newspapers will NEVER be able to update as fast as other info sources can, so they need to specialize in reporting the meat and reporting it right the first time. Find out about the corrupt lockheed engineer that took 2 million in bribes from the chinese to screw up the mars lander, etc... etc... That's what we want.
We want to know what REALLY happened in Somalia when those 'Peace Keepers' were in there. We want pictures, we want info. If we can't get it from a newspaper we'll get it from the 'net. The 'net has the advantage of a blazing fast response time, so the newspapers will have to overcome that by providing more QUALITY. I don't give a shit which celebrity got caught speeding last week. Tell me who just discovered what 3 identified genes do and how to control them!!
Kintanon
daily vs. weekly papers (Score:2)
I long ago gave up on the local daily paper (the Sun [sunspot.net] ) not just because it's been surplanted by the Web and CNN but because it sucks. The lack of competition among local papers (Baltimore had three dailies when I was a kid) allowed quality to slide. While I'll pick one up if it's lying around, I haven't bought a copy in two or three years - I even forgot to pick one up when they had a big photo of me and an interview in their "Plugged In" section. (This was about the OLGA/Harry Fox Agency copyright battle. [olga.net])
However, I find the local "alternative" weekly City Paper [citypaper.com] to be useful; local news, event calendars, etcetera. Unlike the daily, it's not full of sections I have no interest in (sports, travel, "society", and the like). And when I'm done reading, the dogs get to pee on it.
The future? I'd like to see customizable newpapers. Assuming better quality than today's dreck, I might subscribe if I could say "Send me the comics, world news headlines, local news, and don't bother burying me in dead trees for the rest - I don't give a damn who won the football game and I get my tech news from /. so don't bother with you wimpy little PC column. Oh, and something above an eighth grade reading level, please."
I will always read newspapers (Score:2)
I like being able to carry a newspaper to the Caribou Cafe down the road on Sunday mornings and reading while I have my breakfast. I have a subscription to the AJC here in atlanta for the weekend papers. Newsprint still has portability. Sure, as wireless bandwidth gets more widespread and cheaper and as laptops get lighter and more portable, you will see people reading print mediums less and less but I want to curl up with a good BOOK or a good NEWSPAPER in bed at night. Not a laptop...I can already feel my eyesight going bad from staring at a computer screen all day long and then spending a couple of hours an evening catching up on personal business online. I need the break.
And as a side note that may disgust some and make others nod in agreement, It's easier to read a paper on the can than to find a good place to position a laptop. Sad part is, I do my best work in the "office".
Yes, I do read newspapers already! (Score:2)
The whole issue of "timeliness" is overblown. So what if I don't find out that Bush beat McCain in South Carolina for a few more hours? Most of those hours I was asleep, anyhow. Likewise for the "graphically impaired" issue. Why do I need all that eye candy, anyhow?
There are a few things that newspapers do really well that won't happen digitally any time soon, if ever:
1) They're convenient to read over breakfast, or in bed on Sunday morning.
2) They're conveniently organized. Now, you're saying "WHAT!!!???" Yup, they're conveniently organized. The world/national/major local news is in the first section, the local stuff is in the second section, and so forth. No, it's not organized by subject or anything. That's just right. I get to see more than just headlines; if something catches my eye, I'll read it.
I don't know how many equivalent pixels a newspaper page is; I'd guesstimate 30Kx50K or thereabouts for a single broadsheet page. That's so much more visible information than I can fit on my screen that it's laughable. Plus, the screen forces me to be in a certain place.
Like it or not, the "information revolution" is still a relatively small part of life. Eating, sleeping, having shelter and transportation, are still more important to our lives than what happens on the net. The majority of people still don't own computers. The same vapidity that permeates popular culture permeates cyberspace.
In my spare time I do hack. I do other things, too, and I need to do them more. I could use more exercise, which I've lost a lot of time on in the past few months due to a project (a print driver I'm working on). I haven't played my viola in a year, and I could use doing more of that. I've been on the net for upwards of 15 years (I'm a spry old 36). Yes, it's nice that due to the net there are people working on this print driver in Japan, Germany, and elsewhere in the US, but it's not my whole world either.
Software patents, DeCSS, and such are important (just ask my wife how angry I was when the injunctions were granted), but they really aren't the whole of everything. People aren't dying over them. Yes, it is important that sanity prevail here, and the current state of things isn't very sane, but big corporations have always been trying to take over everything and this is just the latest; we have to be just as vigilant as always. And we could use a little perspective beyond our little online world.
Don't get me wrong -- the net does bring important benefits. I've done a lot of research on various ailments and such that various members of my family have, and it's a lot easier to do than it would be in a traditional library, as one example. It can add a lot to life, if it's looked at as something more rather than a replacement for anything. But on the whole I think we're too wrapped up in our geek culture around here, and could use a little more getting out into the world of matter rather than just the world of information.
I stopped reading news papers years ago (Score:2)
Now, I realize that flashy headlines sell papers and get people's attention but the line between the tabliod press and the "serious" press has just about disappeared. The local news paper here in Memphis, "The Commercial Appeal" [gomemphis.com] is very bad about printing articles that are one-sided or appear to be one-sided. They are extermely bad about taking quotes out of context and reporting only the information that they think will make the most sensational story... not the most informative story. Furthermore, they rarely finish a story. They only report the initial "sensational" parts of the story but never follow up with "the rest of the story" For example, they might report on a crime that occurred and someone getting arrested. They will never follow up with a story on whether the person was found guilty and if so, what the punisment was.
I also do not think that the majority of people writing for the popular press is qualified to write about technical topics. You have all seen examples when they have misrepresented facts or have reported information that is flat out wrong- simply because they did not understand what they were writing about.
I do not live in a news void, however. I get the majority of the news that I am interested in from the Internet... the fabulous thing about the internet is (as you all know) that you can get information on a particular topic from many many different sources and come to your own conclusions... not to the conclusions of some reporter. As far as local news, I listen to the headlines on the radio and that's about it. If there is something that catches my attention, I will try to find out more about it.
What can be done to get me to read a news paper... get rid of the sensationalism, start reporting COMPLETE stories. Stop "dumbing down" the information and stop taking quotes out of context. Also, put the whole paper online.
What would we use in the birdcage? (Score:2)
They used to say freedom of the press applies only to those who own one - altho you have to have subscribers, delivery and circulation.
They used to be call the 'penny dredfuls'
Personally, I get most news, wx, sports and software updates from the ol' 28.8 modem - the weekend paper has been on the verge of being canceled for some time - it helps to fill the recycle bin so I get a few bucks off garbage pickup - but about all I read is Dave Berry and the comics Sunday morning to break from the monitor, and maybe the headlines if there's a tornado in town or Gates buys into the local shipyard - just did a 'google' search and didn't find any obvious articles about that but Gates is now tied for largest stockholder of Newport News Shipyard. (local news)
What a question. (Score:2)
I have a full electronic access to most of the journals I need for my work. I have them as a hard copy also downstairs, in the institute library. And though most of the scientific articles I find while surfing, and read after printing them out, the general "news and views" sections I read holding an old-fashioned magazine in my hand. Why? Because it is more convenient than a computer screen.
And getting to newspapers, even though I got most of the headlines from the Web /news /email, I read "Der Spiegel" every Monday. I read it on the bus (I have to travel about 40 minutes to get to the Institute).
I can imagine a device which could replace a newspapers and some of the books for me. I has an US-letter format, is very flat, with a cover over a high-resulution LCD. It is very light, so you can conveniently read it while in the bus, sitting on the toilet or lying in your bed. It does not cause the nausic impression before my eyes like the computer screen do. It does not break after I throw it at the bed side before going to sleep. I can take a pen and draw on the margins. It is water resistent, or at least it doesn't give you a nasty shock if you drop it into the bath tub.
Oh, and I forgot. It costs me $30. For each 6 months :)
Hope this helps, :-)
Regards,
January
Better Comix pages! (Score:2)
Interesting Data point (Score:2)
I recently was surveyed with a followup survey by the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88). This survey tracked several thousand (~40,000 at the start, ~25,000 as of the last followup) from high-school to present.
One of the questions in there was "How many days, on average, would you say you spend reading magazines, newspapers or other periodicals?" I had to as if online news websites counted. Without them, the answer would be 0, with them the answer is more like 6 or 7. The interviewer commented that they needed up update their survey. :-)
I find no reason to go back to paper news sources. They're too slow, too broad, and mostly pointless. I mainly browse over a newspaper if I'm stuck in line at Starbucks, and there I don't usually get past the headlines.
--Joe--
Newspapers - Crimes/Weddings (Score:4)
There are certain things I read online and others that I go straight to the daily paper to read. They both have their place.
-d9
It's the content, stupid (Score:2)
I have different times of my day when each of the different media is more convenient (than at other times.)
Each of the media formats has a variety of content and editorial bias. Within any given media, I select by content.
I think I would be stupid to throw out a good source based on their format. I select by content. That's what's important in a news medium. Content.
Newspapers are `push' technology (Score:2)
My newspaper informs me about lots of things that I would not know how to find on the web (and search engines are not a solution for news). It's the kind of stuff that I wouldn't actively go looking for, but will read if my eye catches it in the paper. Some of that can be very interesting and make me go look for more on the net, but it wouldn't happen this often without a newspaper.
In a way, this is similar to Usenet. Usenet will also feed me with stuff that I did not actively go looking for but that might still be interesting. That's also why I still use it. With newspapers the "effective push scope" is even broader that on a Usenet group dedicated to some (set of) topic(s), so I expect I will stop reading Usenet sooner that my newspaper.
An other reason to have newspapers is that computers still are too heavy and clumsy to cary about wherever a newspaper can go. Also, connecting to the net costs money. Newspapers also cost, but comparing the amount of verified information per buck that I get from my paper with the the amount of unverified stuff that I get from the web, the newspaper is cheaper. A lot cheaper actually, if I consider that on the web I'd need to spend a lot of time and money searching for the same amount of news first.
And last be not least: newspapers do not crash while I'm in the middle of an article. Netscape does that all the time on me.
--
How newspapers could add value. (Score:4)
Are you interested in knowing how you can compete with on-line news enterprises? A lot of this goes for TV and radio, too.
You know what I hate about newspapers? This is an election year, right? You know what would be useful to me? If someone itemized the participants in the race, and their claims, and declared positions on things, and then cross-checked that with their backgrounds, their voting records if applicable, campaign finances, former business partners, and so forth. I don't mean that glib, drop-in-the-bucket narrative you guys print now. I want charts. I want tables. Then print that every Sunday. Keep it up to date! Now, if a dozen of you did it, and you all competed in doing that - who'se more accurate, more impartial, who'se got more dirt... and so forth, then I'd race to the corner shop and buy several papers just to keep up.
I don't just idly want that information, I need it!
Newspapers have always made this claim that they're the guardians of democracy. Well, guardianship is relative, guys. Relatively speaking, compared to your (collectively) slipshod, partisan, "we're insiders and you're not" approach to informing the public about politics, there are half a dozen websites better than the best newspaper for election coverage.
This exposes a bigger issue. You guys focus group to death. Who are you, President Clinton wannabees? Do not write to the lowest common denominator! Write to a higher standard and let the public rise to it! The Lewinsky debacle couldn't have happened had the press not abbetted the sensationalism. As though journalists and editors live in a world where people are shocked by adultery? Not only does nobody care in their own lives, they assume the rich and powerful engage in it. Do you think we weren't all sick to death about hearing about Elian Gonzales within the first 48 hours? There are millions of homeless children, children with dead parents, custody battles... But someone, somewhere, assumes that we'll care about that one. Stupid.
But most of all - just cover the politics. Cover it like you're getting paid to do it. We don't want quips or anecdotes. Veiled party politics. Republican papers and democratic papers. We want to hear it every week like every candidate is a stranger to us. Most of them are!
Aren't you all sick of hearing about how 90% of Americans, when stopped on the street, don't know the first thing about John McCain, or his platform? Or Bill Bradley? Well, guess who'se fault it is, guys. There they are, the numbers screaming out at you that no one knows this stuff. That's the information people - society! - desperately needs - deliver it to our doorstep!
For a little consideration, a little less smug patronizing, and, if nothing else, thorough, systematic coverage of the election, I would gladly pay multiples of your subscription price.
Why I quit (Score:2)
One of the most frustrating things i had to deal with was they kept screwing with my favorite comlumn, Miss Manners. It was supposed to be in every Sunday and Thursday. Then they switched to every Wednesday and Thursday. Many, many times the appropriate section would declare that Miss Manners was running that day and it was not there. They tended to drop it in order to run ads. I called and complained, but they still did it and acted like I was out of line for asking about it!
It was also frustrating that the deliveries were fairly often late or the paper was wet. When I stopped the paper, I found that I rather liked not having the little nuisances gone from my life. I read comics online, I read news online, now available from sources as reliable as the printed paper, and all I really miss is the local ads.
Only when I can't get to a PC (Score:2)
Obviously I am not involved with my local community to any great extent, but even if I want to know what events are happening locally, my first resource is the Web. There are several local-news oriented websites and local tv and radio stations have web sites too. It is just more convenient than messing with dead trees.
URL fix (Score:2)
Alive, but their days are numbered (Score:2)
I don't read newspapers. I used to, when I was in a situation without 'Net access, but now that I'm connected most of the time, I never feel the need. The only content that's useful is the local stuff. I am not nearly as impressed with the writing quality as some other posters seem to be, maybe that only applies to a couple of papers. I also don't appreciate the constant tele-marketing, but I guess that's a personal thing.
As far as local content goes, its easy to see why the 'Net, so far, has failed in this arena. Until most (60+%) of the news-loving folks in your town have broadband, it's not gonna happen. When they do, a
/. only works as a news source because it has achieved a critical mass of posters. It works because of the huge number of eyeballs and the massive effort that can be aggregated with each person giving their $.02. I think this is a great style of news dissemination, sure some of it's innacurate, but that *always* gets pointed out by someone. You have to use sig/noise filters, but they work automagically after a while. If you can figure out how to make / work for a local news site, you can go ahead and quit your day job.
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Newspapers are souvenirs (Score:2)
To me, newspapers are just souvenirs. If something that I think is special happens, I'll buy a newspaper and store it away in my drawers or attic somewhere. Often I won't even bother reading past the front page. I'll have probably read the story a dozen times from a bunch of different sources already.
Even our local newspaper has a website [thisisglou...hire.co.uk] now. I just don't see the point in newspapers as news. Even the classifieds are online. Newspapers are ornaments.
Newspapers are like any original physical media- software, films, albums, whatever- I only buy the originals when I want to celebrate ownership of an original item. For instance, if there's some commercial software I really like (Paint Shop Pro [jasc.com] springs to mind), I'll buy the original as an ornament on my shelf (usually I actually install the warez version anyway). I buy original CDs of bands I really, really like, but tend to listen to the MP3s. I'll buy videos of films that really move me (Aliens, Bladerunner etc), even though I might prefer a different foreign/censored/director's cut that I've taped from somebody else.
And then there is the media which is mediocre, which is okay for a while, which does a job that doesn't need repeating. The stuff I wouldn't endorse if I were a celebrity, but hey, it fills a need, until something better comes along. One hit wonder bands. This morning's news on another dull day. Some software which crashes a lot or isn't really as flexible as I want it to be. An okay film that my wife might want to watch later. These are destined to spend their lifetime in my collection of MP3s, websites, warez and VHS tapes.
How to sell more newspapers? See Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age".
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Oh, to answer the question (Score:2)
But seriously, there are real advantages to computerized media that a printed product just can't compete with, no matter what you print or how you lay it out - that is the ability to search (something a computer is MUCH better at than an eyeball skimming over an index or the classifieds) and to customize what you see and what you don't. The ability to control what gets shoved in your face and what gets relegated to the back pages is a powerful, addictive drug that once your hooked you won't ever go back, by personal choice. Like Yahoo. Papers have always championed diversity and now they've got it and a single run just isn't going to meet the needs of everyone, or else the content just gets thinner and thinner from trying to appeal to a lowest common denominator.
The answer to get people to want to read your paper? Put it online - naturally the local 7832 printers unions isn't going to like it a bit but they can be retrained as McSE's to run the server farm you'll need to meed the demand and think of the advantages - lower printing costs - if your make a big mistake ("Dewey Wins!") you can easily change it dynamically and have everyone just hit 'reload' instead of having to print retractions in the next paper. And most importantly to the business, advertisers will now only have prominant positions at the head or side of columns, but paid links to their own sites for those wishing to find out more about their product.
For a time when the poorer folks will need a paper edition, but for many that even need a paper edition they'll have 'paper on demand' - that is find an article you want, hit 'print' and it prints out on a disposable pulp w/ soy ink or something and they can take it out on the porch for close scrutiny over coffee and scones or whatever.
Would I ever buy a newspaper again? (Score:2)
Why?
I know a lot of people say they find screens hard to read from. I don't: I read from a screen all day every day, it's my normal mode of working. By contrast, I don't find reading from broadsheet newspapers at all convenient - they're too big to handle comfortably in almost any normal reading situation.
And I strongly agree with Jon's comments both on the quality of technology news in newspapers and their understanding of what constitutes culture. I have never read a story about the Internet in a newspaper which didn't contain at least three fundamental misconceptions in the first paragraph; and I find the idea that 'culture' is represented only by the forms popularised by the Austro-Hungarian empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries risible in the extreme.
And, in Scotland at least, the tabloid-sized newspapers contain nothing but salacious gossip about vacuous 'celebrities' in whom I have no interest.
"The Record" - Katz you should know better (Score:2)
Basically, I've been to a lot of different places and seen local papers, and most of them are not very good and would best be used lining a bird cage. The Record, on the other hand, is one of the most consistently GREAT newspapers around. The columnists are top rate, the news is very unbiased, in-depth, and complete (local and national, with national stuff usually taking priority over the local without sacrificing the amount of either), it has MANY sections full of information, it's a good source of local and national ads as well as local classifieds, it's very easy to read, the Sports section is probably the best in the nation (a lot of the columnists do national work, some are regulars on ESPN.com), and in general it's pretty much a standard in Northern NJ. Not being there at the moment, I miss it. Every time I get a chance to go back up to NJ, I always make sure I get some copies of it.
Katz, you know about The Record, and you know that a lot of people read it, and you know that it's very useful and enjoyable and it does a very good job at what it's supposed to do. So why are you predicting the death of newspapers? Sure, a lot of the small-town ones are getting trampled by what's available on the Internet daily, but I think a newspaper like The Record ain't going anywhere anytime soon. I think that there is room for quality newspapers in a world dominated by the Internet, even if just because we're not at the point where EVERYONE can get their Internet news up-to-date in the subway, at the breakfast table, or on the toilet yet.
The right tool for the job.... (Score:2)
Newspapers can survive, even (especially!!!!!) local papers, but only if they eschew oldthink...
Your Working Boy,
What would I want from a newspaper? (Score:2)
Better writing than I would find on the Web.
Things that interest me, in a general sense- although it might seem rather specialized.
I don't get any newspapers. I'd be somewhat more likely to get them if I had a wood-stove and had a use for burning them afterwards. I _do_ get some publications, though, and this tells you something about what I'd want from a newspaper. I get 'em from Baker's or a local bookstore, in one case by subscription.
I get MacAddict by subscription based on their habit of providing a CD-Rom with large numbers of recent programs and demos and things- it's like a sort of miniature MacOS Freshmeat or something. This is farthest from what a newspaper would need to be for me to buy it. I get Cinefex when it comes to the bookstore- this is a quarterly movie special effects journal that is extremely in touch with its industry and teaches me many things and gives me ideas. I get various ultralight and homebuilt-airplane magazines at Baker's (an office supplies store), because they're fun to read- I tend to scan them to see if there's any particular article appealing enough that I'd want to have the magazine around indefinitely.
In all of these cases (least so for MacAddict!) I am also interested in access to the advertisements- this is because on the one hand pro cinema effects technology, and on the other ultralight aircraft equipment, isn't a thing I see in daily life, or locally. (computer hype is everywhere and I'd be happier if MacAddict didn't even run advertisements :) )
So, logically, the way to sell printed paper to me is to deal with an area I want to know about, but can't get local access to- to deal with it expertly, knowing more than I do and knowing who else to interview and publish and write about- and to put me in touch with an entire community including pundits who know more than I do and advertisers selling specialised products that I don't ever see anywhere else. Do all that and I buy the printed paper- it's that simple. I don't say it's _easy_, but it's not particularly mysterious.
One interesting side note is that to do this, you positively have to take an interest in the subject matter to the point of being passionate about it. There's no room at all for token coverage and having your real focus be getting money from me. If you can't out-geek me in the area I want to hear about, then I'll tend to see through that right away and drop you like a hot rock. Whatever the common business wisdom is these days, if you want to sell a newspaper or magazine or journal, sincerity isn't just some selling point: it's the main reason for anybody to be listening to you. Who the hell would listen to somebody who didn't really care what they were talking about as long as they sold ad space?
my news (Score:2)
- USA today online (for the worldly part of me)
- Slashdot (for the dork in me)
- The Daily Show on comedy central (hits all the major topics, and I nearly bust a gut watching)
Honestly, what else do you need on a daily basis? Every major story appears in one of the above, and USA today/slashdot will provide additional links.
Why should I read the newspaper everyday and be hit with a front page of murders, killings, drugs, death, and politics and other sensationalism, when I can turn on the Daily Show, get the same basic info and laugh myself silly in the process?
"You want to kiss the sky? Better learn how to kneel." - U2
a reporter turned programmer's perspective (Score:2)
General observations about papers:
A Big thing is what Jon mentioned, they still act as if they are in the breaking news bussiness. More analysis, etc. pieces needed, but they are scary for publishers because it blurs the news/opinion line.
This leads to the Really Big Point. Newspapers in particular have been led down a path of "objectivity" in the U.S. mostly because of the constant attacks from the right for "bias." As a result, "objectivity" in U.S. papers has led to what I call "quote counting". Our political reporter at the paper I worked for (who covered state legislature as well), always made sure to present both (i.e., Dem & GOP) sides to an issues, often to the point of counting the number of quotes he gave each side. If a Dem called him with a "story", he called a Republican rep and "got both sides".
What's wrong with that? Well, too often reporters don't do the obvious which is to say "that's crap!". The reason they don't is alluded to above. If a Dem proposes a bill and the reporter does a lengthy investigation, talks with experts, files Freedom of Information requests, etc, all to (ultimately) write a piece that says "this is probably not a good idea is you look at all the facts", they get reamed even if they have a Republican quoted many times in favor of the idea. They get reamed by the GOP, they get reamed by the publisher, etc. Reverse the parties? Doesn't matter (I know the right will hate that). I could take the exact same political story to my rabid GOP booster neighbor and to my left-wing mother and BOTH OF THEM WOULD SAY IT WAS BIASED!
Anyway, so the reporter is not ALLOWED to share the context of the story with the reader. This is what NPR does, for instance, that makes it so good. One reason, I think, is that it is easier for a reporter to use their voice to make a point about whether they believe a person is telling the truth.
Anyway, I've gone on and on here. I'll wrap up with this summary: Papers fall into one of four categories these days:
1. Big city dailies. These are sometimes locally owned, mostly chain. All mass and no substance for the most part. The above, fully research analysis piece would probably get sent back for several rewrites, but published. Unfortunately, it would be buried well in the back and very few people would see it. Note: In a family-owned paper, it would only get published if it jibed with the publisher's political beliefs.
2: Medium size papers, locally owned. The above article would not get published. Locally owned small papers can't afford to piss off ANYONE. They are doing too poorly financially and can't lose advertising revenue. Almost all businessmen of any stature in a medium to small town are active politically (on both sides). They buy the ads. Also, sometimes the publisher's family is split politically, which makes in even worse. The paper I worked at, for instance, could not publish ANY stories on Abortion, because the brothers were split on the issue. POOF! A major issue in America is never mentioned. Isn't the news fun?
3: Medium to small papers, chain owned. The above article would never get written because they would never have someone on staff to do it. Chains cut paper staff to the bone and salaries too. Maybe a talented person is at the paper, but chances are they do a zillion things besides reporting and don't have weeks to spend on a story like that.
4: Alternative weeklies, etc.: The above story would get written if it jibed with the publishers political beliefs, but readership (as opposed to circulation) at these papers is tiny. Very few would read it, and many would reject it's conclusions because the paper is "biased"
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Death of Paper (Score:2)
I'd be more than happy to share some of my reading habits with you.
Newspapers have never quite tickled my fancy, I've always had a hard time to tackle an overly large and totally untame sheet of paper. The times I do read something news worthy would be over a person's shoulder or when it appears in a more tame form (ie. cut into pieces).
On the average, being a geek, I'm a real busy person and would give almost nothing to the major newspapers out there (but I'v seen the new Onion), politics and gossip just does not delight me. The only time you do see me get over my boredom and read something in default format would be to turn the newspaper on it's back, and explor the last few pages in the hope of finding something comical to entertain.
The same goes for traditional books. I am an avid reader, but over the last few years, I've been slacking very badly (since it's just not economically possible to read a book anymore nowdays). All sorts of constraints apply when reading a book.
My solutions arrived in the form a small electornic device (which I immediatly dubbed 'garo' -- a long lost feline friend). This device was a PalmOS based Handspring [handspring.com] Visor Delux, with 8mb ram and the ability to upgrade using an unique hardware modular slot (even though it's flash is not upgradeable).
After having exhausted my batters in less than a week (of continuous play with the Visor), I decided to explore the waste expances of software [palmgear.com] available for PalmOS. I installed utility after utility, getting delighted with the slightest twist of a coding wizard (and yes the little mirror program that turned your palm screen black did send giggles up my spine and entertain a whole load of female friends).
One of the delightfully free software that was buzzed down my USB connection into my Visor was AvantGo [avantgo.com]. Which was a mixture of channel based online newsfeeds and other resources (even
I take my visor everwhere, it fits snuggly in my pocket and feels very conforatble in my hand. All channels are updated at least once a day. I usually update early morning and in the evenining. News is read where I happen to be
Now that takes care of news.. What about books?! It took me over a month to get into books on my Visor and man.. Now I'm reading almost 2 books a week after that. My fav doc reader would undoubtably be Bill Clagett's CSpotRun [32768.com], A GPLed reader that is undoubtably the king of all Doc Readers out there. It has the ability to make the fonts closer, to turn the text into every single position known on the pilot (read from the sides or upside down?), autoscroll, drag scroll, scroll using the pageup-pagedown (fun!), and anything you could contribute! Ebooks are fun! Most books from the gutenberg project have been converted into ebooks over at MemoWare [memoware.com] also you could OCR any book you own and convert it into doc format using the linux doctoolkit [linuxbox.com]. Others check here [memoware.com]. I have read War and Peace (over 1/2 million words) by Tolstoy (free on tolstoy.org [tolstoy.org]), re-read Most books from William Gibson, Douglas Adams, Arthur C. Clarke and various other entities. I've also had the pleasure of reading classics such as ShakesSpeare, SunTzu, Tolkein, Plato, Confucious and many others right on my PDA.
Overall, the handheld computer with it's extreemly large memory (yes books in electornic format are tiny!) has been the only reason why I've gone back and read so many books (not to mention carry around so many techical notes and moste of the relevant HOWTO pages). I would recommend a handheld PDA to anyone who reads it and encorage them to read electornic Newspapers and e-books on a regualar basis.
Enjoy!
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Re:What I hate about newspapers (Score:2)
PS: I'm sort of serious, and this definitely *is* on topic. Crash resistance is one of the major advantages that newspapers have over the average PC.
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Re:Death of Paper (Score:2)
The book I got (probably from gutenberg project and not tolstoy.org) was partitioned into 9 books which were easy to read. Tolstoy.org has the book in one huge lump of txt file
Enjoy.
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why would I? (Score:2)
Even for historical purposes, there are much better searchable archives online. Physical newspapers aren't searchable.
Why would I want someone's opinions of whom I don't know, mired in an outdated technology infecting the story? This is exactly why don't watch local news on TV. KEEP YOUR OPINIONS TO YOURSELF. Just the facts, ma'am.
Why would I want to get black ink all over my hands and clothes?
Why would I pay 100% of the cost for something that I would be interested in 5% of? A physical newspaper has too much information, more than want to know, or worse yet, doesn't have what I want to read about because it didn't fit into their projected demographic.
Newspapers use unfair labor practices (Detroit News and Free Press for example).
It isn't electronic. I can't easily copy/paste articles into emails, notes or documents on my computer.
a Denverite's $.02 (Score:2)
Here in Colorado, we have three major papers:
The Rocky Mountain News
The Denver Post
The Onion
No, I'm not joking. The Onion has a HUGE circulation. You KNOW you've heard of it. Hell, you probably read it. It's Coloradan, baby. Boo-yah.
In a way, The Onion is the best of the three. Sure, it doesn't provide any actual news (aside from concert listings and music/movie/book reviews), but it puts more humor in one place than any website I've ever visited, and for free to boot. But The Onion is also conscious of the web, so you can read the issue from one or two weeks ago online (The website also allows Coloradans to read their Columbine spoof, which was edited out of our region's hardcopy papers.). There's nothing like picking up an Onion at one of the campus newsstands to read on the bus ride home
Anyway, considering the "real papers". For me, the Post basically flunks out on general principle, since it's a two-fold paper, meaning it's well over 4 square feet when unfolded, making it basically impossible to read. And if that weren't enough, it's articles tend to be less articulate, about less important issues, and of a generally lower quality. But it does carry Dilbert
The News, OTOH, is a one-fold paper, has clearly written articles on topics of importance, and carries Garfield, Peanuts, Robotman, and Shoe.
But no one really cares about that. The point is the *function* of the paper. From my POV, papers are the best source of local news. If I want to get local news from TV, I have to:
1. sit through commercials
2. sit through sports
3. sit through human interest stories
4. sit through the barrage of violent crime reports
Plus more crap that doesn't come readily to mind, I'm sure. And I can only get it at 4, 5, 9, and 10 o'clock. What a bunch of suck. The paper I can read anytime I want. I can ignore the ads and the lame stories. Plus there's the classifieds. No online job search lists as many jobs as the paper. All the used car search engines put together don't total a tenth of the auto listings. And eBay is the only even marginal substitute (that I know of) for the misc stuff, like musical instruments, pool tables, yadda yadda yadda.
Anyway, if I had a point, it's forgotten. Take it or leave it
MoNsTeR
Why Read a Newspaper? (Score:2)
1. Newspapers usually devote more than 30 seconds to important stories and the sound-bite from the TV broadcast occupies one or two lines from a 100-line column.
2. Newspapers generally stand as responsible for what they say and are genuinely embarrased when they mis-state the truth. Newsprint may be temporary but it is permanent enough to keep them honest.
3. If it is an important and controversial topic I tend to read the newspaper for the truth. Newspaper stories generally segregate fact from opinion with care and that makes them particularly valuable.
4. Newspapers keep editorials and content separate.
5. Reading the entire content of the TV news takes considerably less than 30 minutes -- particularly if you simply read the first paragraph of the story and go on as the TV news people usually do.
Writers try hard to cover stories using a vocabulary that an eighth grader can comprehend. That is not always easy and is particularly difficult when the topic is science or technology. -- Have you ever tried to explain what you do to an eighth grader with a good general education? I'll bet Linux is not a major topic in his life and news of computers is not particularly exciting.
As a group /. readers are considerably more educated than the general population; particularly in science and technology. To expect those topics to be dealt with in a newspaper and satisfy us is unreasonable. Sometimes I suspect that newspapers stay away from topics they can't adequately explain since when they fail the truth is sacrificed.
I truly hope that newspapers succeed in getting their content onto the web and survive as a business. Should they fall silent the population will have lost their primary (IMHO) source of information.
Re:Of course I still read the newspaper. (Score:2)
Metro Population 216,478,090
Non Metro Population 53,820,434
So there is only a market of 53 million people for the papers that you are talking about. Katz is completely correct in assuming that most of the papers are delivered to metro areas and read by metro citizens. It is nearly inarguable that local papers will not die in the next 20 years. But what about the larger, more "wired" metro populations? Do they seriously have a need for paper based news? It is a very interesting question.
I personally find myself much better informed by not reading the paper and using that time to read news websites. That, coupled with the complete misrepresentation by the media on technology issues, makes paper based news just hard to handle. However, the local collage news paper (U of MN Daily) is filled with interesting local news and events that I care about. But I only read that because it is free. *grin*
In short, I think that papers will definately live on in the local scene. Most likely, they will be religated there as more and more people get online and have less and less need for world news. Perhaps there will be a second wind in subscribership when they only report local issues and news. I myself would sign up for such a paper. In the end, time will tell.
Crulx
Re:Local news and non-wired people (Score:2)
They could sub-contract the local news writers to do the stories that would be put instantly on the online version.
It's the TV newsmedia that is dead (Score:2)
They bally about the most sensationalistic news that have no real impact on a person and don't even give mention of truely important things. So much so, that I don't even watch any television news.
The Internet fulfills what TV newsmedia used to be best at: providing instantaneous coverage of important news events. Newspapers, while not the most immediate news source, provide a more indepth and better researched look at things. They are also not as sensationalistic.
Consequently, regarding what you said that a frontpage story about McCain beating out Bush, I had not heard about that. However, even if I had, I appreciate the much more indepth look that is in the newspapers rather than the cursory reporting done by the television newsmedia.
The one thing that I would appreciate much more in the newspapers is more technology coverage. I also find that the minimal coverage found in most newspapers is not very well researched with glaring inaccuracies. While I appreciate the increased technology coverage found in my local newspaper, The Boston Globe, I find that it is still not enough.
I still find it odd that there is so much more coverage about a small thing half a world away than there is about some important thing related to technology.
Chris Hagar
Re:Newspapers - Crimes/Weddings (Score:2)
This is truer than I'd like it to be - two of the three newspapesr I've purchased in the last year I snagged because of the crimes reported therein. Where else can you read about seventeen-year-olds snagging credit card numbers out of "chat rooms", using them to buy ten-plus grand worth of merchandise from Amazon, and getting stung by seven cops after they let their entire class know about the operation?
Even that coverage is pathetic, though. The opening line from the cc-fraud story: When you build a high-tech world, you open yourself up to high-tech crime...
Comix, local sports, and litter pan liners! (Score:2)
Eric
My local paper (Score:2)
I do not get it at the newstand every day, but practically every day, and the reason I do so is primarily for the local news section and the joy of reading the OP/ED section to see what the local people have to say about things.
There are in fact about 5 regulars who write editorials that I look for every time I open that section. They tend to be quite entertaining if not insane.
Plus the rantings of our own local psycho mayor make for an interesting read.
Where do I go for other news?
Online I go to the NY Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today.
The real question here might be whether or not printed newspapers will exist in 10 or 15 years.
Will they? Who knows, but probably not.
I for one would enjoy having all of my "newspaper" choices delivered to my huge LCD flatpanels located in every room of my home via an incredibly fast net connection, and we all know it's coming.
Will my older relatives enjoy this? No, certainly not, and they'll continue buying regular papers until the day they die.
But I suspect the fast-paced technology world will make paper "newspapers" obsolete, and they'd all better prepare for that day.
Internet news not yet up to speed (Score:2)
CNN.com is basicly the best news source I have found and it is simply skimming the headlines.
I get my local news from www.hotcoco.com not much more than a reprint of a local newspaper.. and I read the newspaper that runs it... Contra Costa Times...
It will be a while before Internet news can really replace newspapers... It has the potental for depth of any given subject.. but that depth is unexplored.
On the other hand... I don't watch TV anymore...
TV news dose have the advantage of bringing the news quicker... The Internet can do this as well but I don't see it happening yet...
It would be nice to see some rapid and indepth reporting done on the Internet... it can be done... a Quicky rapid.. and maybe at the end of the day a detailed indepth...
The news media outlets know what we want they simply need to learn how to deliver it...
Slashdot is a good example of one delivery system... I saw a nice Java applet that dose a good job (Ug Java is evil... puke Java evil.. ok enough of that) such news tickers offer headlines... offering thies to websites is a good idea....
Also <a href="http://slashdot.org/code.shtml">Slashdot</a
As everyone discovers how to use the Internet for news delivery they will expand the covrage of the news available. As they cover more users they'll offer more content.
Of course the talkback feature on Slashdot is a huge hit and a plus for ANY news agentcy... Forget media bies.... When people can post replys directly to any given news story Media bies is no longer an issue.. instead of one leading bies the readers end up being exposed to every posable bies under the sun... So instead of zero bies (a very hard mesure to achive with out slicing valuable information) you get EVERY bies.. No one agenda takes over... and the masses are informmed
Re:One more value add (Score:2)
Parliamentary prodeedings in New South Wales are available at the Hansard [nsw.gov.au] page.
That sort of thing seems more like a web function to me - frankly, square-inch for inch, news pages are more expensive than web space. If you want full text dumps, the web would be the place to put them (provided you could pay someone to transcribe them...).
Myself, if I'm looking for raw info on news, I go to the web, if I want commentary, I go to the papers. I don't think this is an intrinsic feature of the web, but whenever I'm looking for information on the web, the sheer volume of irrelevancy/inanity overcomes me.