Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Why Newspapers Are Dying

Most everyone understands these days that print media is in its death throes.  (Future grandchild: "What did you say, Gramps?  You got big chunks of dead trees delivered to your house every morning with words stamped on them that told you what happened the day before?  Gramps, stop telling lies!")
I recently came across a particularly illuminating example of this trend in my own family's media consumption habits.  Understand, I've always been a news junkie.  I've read or at least glanced at the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and Le Monde most every day ever since college.  But I transitioned from the dead tree to the web versions at the first opportunity -- in the mid 1990s in the case of the Journal and the Times, more recently for Le Monde (which, it will come as no surprise, had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the digital era).
However, about a year and a half ago, my aged father and his wife came to live with us.  She in particular wasn't happy reading on a computer screen.  So we got her a home delivery subscription to the print New York Times on weekdays, skipping the Saturday and Sunday editions because she said she felt like taking a break on weekends.  As of a few months ago this gentle lady no longer resides with us.  So my wife suggested we cancel the Times subscription.  She read it herself occasionally, but being a confirmed penny-pincher that wasn't enough in her eyes to justify $7.70 per week.  It made no difference to me, since I was a digital only reader.

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