Newspapers on our doorstep are becoming a thing of the past. My wife always enjoyed curling up with the Chicago Tribune, especially on Sunday, but personally, I always hated fumbling with all the different sections -- stories starting on one page and continuing deeper into the publication. And all the advertisements, what a nightmare... but I digress ...
The reality is that both major Chicago papers, the NY Times and other city papers are in trouble. It could be argued that financial miscues could be the reason, but certainly they are playing catch-up with the "Internet method of delivery" of the 21st century. You can subscribe for free via the internet to these and other city's papers (try http://www.nytimes.com/ as an example), and customize the subscription to personalize your areas of interest. But then, as some people may think, you then "lock" yourself into the views and politics of that particular news source. On the publishing side, the revenue stream for this type of delivery may not as lucrative as the paper version (more on that in a future blog entry). So now, we have two reasons for the news consumer to think differently about their method of news retrieval.
So, OK then, subscribe yourself to a number of city newspapers and try to keep up with the news reading through 3,4,5... of these type of subscriptions. However, there is an interesting ( and possibly more efficient) concept of a newsmap -- a site that aggregates all the news from sources worldwide , and gives a global view (11 countries) of news item headlines in 7 different categories (World, Nation, Business, Tech, Sports, Entertainment, and Health). You have the option of filtering which country(ies) and/or which category(ies) of your interest. And, even better filter by a search term. Now you can see a picture of the news with the more published items in larger print and less published in diminishing size print. Try the newsmap at
http://newsmap.jp/. If you register, the service will remember your personal filtering criteria.
Try it... comments welcomed.
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I'm sorry that the newspapers are having financial trouble because no one is reading them. Newspapers give us so much more detail than you can find in a condensed web article. Yes, I do read a lot of news online, but when I want deeper detail, I reach for the newspaper for that article. I like the freedom of choice of the newsmap, but again, the articles are short and it makes me wonder just how much has been edited from a story to keep it as a brief internet read.
ReplyDeleteDid you ever hit, on the head, my feelings with your digression! I am watching the Trib get skinnier and skinnier...to what end? An empty bag at the end of my driveway?!
ReplyDeleteWhile I have always felt I needed a break from being in front of a computer, which is a lot of what I do in a given day, so I welcomed a different activity once I got home, i.e. sitting and reading the paper, perhaps I need to develop a different mindset. Would a mini HP on my lap do the trick?! Yhis could take some getting used to but then again...isn't that life in general?!
Times are 'a changing. Next wave will be the paper disappearing, and the free internet service becoming a pay for news service. WSJ is looking at pay/article. A lot of discussion about that.
ReplyDeleteAnd how soon will textbooks follow the path that our nations newspapers are taking right now? We are truly living in different times. The speed at which all this is happening is very hard to keep up with. More news sooner!! (rather than later?)
ReplyDeleteI agree with the statement this is happening so fast that it is hard to keep up with and also am concerned about latching onto something too soon in the field of education without fully understanding the repercussions.
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