Is there a good reason to read dead trees newspapers?

[politicat]

The three big papers in my area all have online editions, and those are my first stop in the mornings, after email, while I'm still drinking the daily cuppa.

I don't really like having the clutter of stacks of papers to go to recycling, and I'm sure as shit not throwing them away.

So is there a reason to take a dead trees edition? Are there stories I miss if I take everything online?

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

1. Newspapers can go where the internet can't.

Namely, on the subway or bus.

[boobooday]

5. Ahem,

Or into the bathroom.

[yurbud]

2. it's easier to take them to a restaurant. That's it.

I suppose if I had a good handheld PC, I wouldn't even bother with that.

[blm]

11. I read them in the bathtub.

.

[politicat]

13. I have a handheld, and could sync a digital edition onto it if I so chose.

So for me, that's not really an argument. For others, yes.

[Dr. Mullion Blasto]

3. On a related note, the yuppies in my area get the WSJ and never pick it up

-they just lie around on doorsteps and hallways until some kind soul throws them out. What a waste of trees! I think they get the subscriptions from their jobs.
Also, the NYT drops their extra papers off at school and they just lie around on all the tables (when they read them, that is) and the poor janitor has to go around and throw them out. My school doesn't re-cycle so everything goes into the garbage.

[SmokingJacket]

4. I don't like having to stare at a screen for EVERYTHING.

I like sitting down with a cup of coffee and a paper and being totally unplugged for a while.

I love cutting out articles to mail to my mom.

I love drawing little devil horns on pictures of Bush when I'm on the phone or something.

I like doing the puzzles.

One neat thing about the physical paper: you can't avoid news stories you're not interested in. I often find myself drawn into an article that I wouldn't have read online, because online I just go to my usual hangouts. Does that makes sense?

I've never read any substansive local news online, though I'm sure it'll happen one day.

I like hearing it slam my front door at 4 am. I love remembering delivering it when I was a child.

Romantic reasons, mostly. But hey, I'm human.

[realFedUp]

8. ditto for your reasons to read the hard copy...nt

[politicat]

14. Sure. Romance is critical to our keeping our humanity.

So I'm hearing that the visceral, tactile parts are important, too. I admit I miss the smell of newspapers, but not the grime.

(Since I have weak eyes enlarging the font on the screen makes reading easier at times.)

[XemaSab]

21. I totally agree

"One neat thing about the physical paper: you can't avoid news stories you're not interested in. I often find myself drawn into an article that I wouldn't have read online, because online I just go to my usual hangouts. Does that makes sense?"

I feel like there are enough online media outlets that there's the risk of becoming intellectually ghettoized, no matter who you are or what you're about.

I'm at the point now where all my news comes from LBN. I don't even go to the times website because they are such tools. But by doing this, I worry that I'm only reading articles and opinions that reinforce my viewpoint.

If you've got a print copy of the paper, you're not self-censoring the news so much.

[silverweb]

6. No.

eom

[greenman3610]

7. those newspapers in Harry Potter,

with the moving pictures, or, better, the one in the
"FireFly" pilot, where the text and everything is
scrolling and moving -
that's where they'll have to go
to survive.

[Retrograde]

9. they're easier on my aged eyes

especially for longer stories. Print stories seem to go into greater depth than on-line versions. And they're easier to hold than a laptop when it's SRO on the train or bus. Tried using my PDA for text once, but found the font too much of a strain.

Besides, newspapers have a lot of additional uses: wrapping up the debris from cracking crabs, keeping the roots of plants moist until they can be put in the ground, protecting the driveway from splashes when I repaint the furniture, putting under the cat box (the Wall Street Journal is best for this), emergency cat litter, wrapping and packing material and probably lots of other things I can't think of at the moment. I probably could buy stuff specially for these purposes, but I like the idea of reusing things.

[politicat]

17. I'm seeing the opposite.

For me, reading on an LCD screen (my laptop or my PDA) where I can adjust the font size when I need to makes reading a lot easier. (For trains or busses, I tend to use my iPod for audio - books, debates or podcasts usually. I can't read on a moving vehicle; bad car sickness.) If newspapers would be decent for archiving, I'd probably consider getting them so I can have the information in them if the worst happens, but they're crappy for it, and I can generate enough power with my exercise bike to keep my laptop and my PDA running.

Comparing the local paper to the local online paper, the articles are usually the same - there's no change between editions because in paste-up, the compositor just sends the text document over to the web developer when it's ready to go to press. In some cases (9/11 comes to mind) the website for the Camera was more up to date and complete than the paper edition was.

As far as the extra uses... No crabs in the Rockies (at least, not without expenditure of jet fuel), I have canvas drop cloths for painting (that I never have to throw away at all), the cats have a fabric mat that gets washed weekly under the box and they use wood stove pellets for litter (we always have those) ... And when I have gotten the paper, I've gotten more than I can possibly re-use. It always has to be recycled.

[blm]

10. An unexpected consequence - the weakening of the DC bureaus and the

loss of funding for their investigatory reporting teams.

This is basically why Knight Ridder has been targeted by investor cronies of Bush who are demanding the company be broken up into smaller pieces to dimish its overall influence.

KnightRidder exposed the WH was cooking the intel books as early as Oct 2002, and was the only paper to give extensive coverage of DSM when it was revealed last spring. Shortly after, the investors started pressuring the publishers unmercifully, demanding unreasonable profits.

[politicat]

16. The funding model for papers is to sell advertising, and they sell online

ads as well. Thus, they still have the revenue stream, possibly a more lucrative one. So why would people not reading papers in paper edition cause the loss of the investigatory team?

(Not trying to be combative, just trying to understand.)

I agree that investagative journalists are critical to the society, but I don't understand why it matters; some of the biggest stories in Phoenix news were broken by The New Times (a free, weekly -- they connected the dots on Charles Keating and the S&Ls; on Joe Arpaio and his abuses of prisoners at the county jail, etc); similar for Denver metro and Westword. If free papers that depend on advertising sales can still support investigative journalists, it seems to me that the weakening of the IJ teams may be coming more from the conglomeration of media consortiums and the lack of diversity in media ownership. (Or is this a chicken and the egg problem?)

[blm]

18. Online ads aren't helping bottom line for news organizations.

My spouse works in a newsroom and also contributes to their online presence. The ad money really isn't big at all.

BTW....the NYT hasn't been doing their best investigatory work lately, have they?

KnightRidder forced the cooked intel story out into the open and the DSM report. KnightRidder has been doing for the last 5 years what people expected from NYT and WaPo, but there are too many Bush shills working for those leading papers now.

[CornField]

19. Actually, that isn't true overall

Most papers receive the biggest bulk of their funding from legal notices. It is currently the law that such notices be published in the local and/or regional newspaper.

[rman]

22. Some journalistic investigations are more critical then others

Exposing "cooking the intel books by the WH" is more harmful to the powers that be than the issues you mention.

Regardless of advertisers, investors demanding unreasonable profits can still break a media outlet.

[Karenina]

12. I have Ordners full

of filed clippings/ tear sheets. Stuff you'll NEVER be able to retrieve from the cyberspace...

[politicat]

15. How is that different from saving the page?

I inherited my grandfather's files, and his millions of clippings about union stuff in Kokomo, IN in the 70s, (he was a shop rep for UAW at Delco) but because it isn't necessarily dated (the dates sometimes got cut off) and the paper's name isn't on the clipping, they're virtually useless as any sort of documentation.

On the other hand, the pages I download and save have a time-date stamp, the publication's masthead, etc.

So.... what's the difference?

[Karenina]

20. Electricity.

I can read mine by candlelight! :evilgrin: