Changing Times

It's no secret that print newspapers are struggling all across the country. With the increase of access to information on the net and the rise of pads and smart phones, it has to be increasingly difficult to sell papers on newsprint. My local newspaper is joining a growing list of newspapers that have decided that its on-line edition is what is going to be the important thing going forward. Starting next month they are going to begin a transition to charging for full access to the on-line edition. All forms of subscription are going to include full Internet access. But the cost of getting the print edition is going to rise significantly.

I'm a bit of a traditionalist. I like reading the paper in the morning. (Never was much of a fan of afternoon papers, though.) But my home page on the net has been the front page of the local newspaper for most of the time I've lived here. Right now I have the Sunday paper in front of me as I type. My finances aren't the greatest at the moment, so saving some money would be attractive. I'll have to weigh the options when I see them.

The big thing I read the local paper for is local news. National news is available all over the net and (at least in abridged form) on TV. Important state news is pretty well covered by the TV. But information about what's going on in my town of 150,000 is pretty scarce except in the newspaper. We had a "throw away" local free paper for awhile, but I haven't seen one in quite a while and don't know when it stopped coming, because I paid little attention to it.

I frequently check the websites of newspapers from St. Louis and Kansas City to see what's going on back in Missouri where I used to live. I wonder how long it will be before they'll want to start charging for on-line access. I think we've been living in a sort of golden age. As more and more charges start being imposed, the range of places where we look for information will surely shrink. Is this actually the beginning of the end of "the information age?"

Evil thoughts

I can't help thinking that rhythmic gymnastics would be dramatically improved if they put two teams on the floor at once with one person on each team, "the designated shooter" allowed to shoot paint balls at the other team as long as she kept tossing the ball flipping the ribbon or whatever. You'd get extra points for hits on the other team's faces, but they'd get extra difficulty points for continuing unfazed, sort of like no-splash in the diving events. Cream pies could be a separate event.