Changing Times

[cactuswatcher]

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?"

Comments

[armygeezer.livejournal.com]

The NY Times makes you pay if you want more than 10 articles a month. If they had a rate for online only I'd consider it, but their anytime, anywhere rate is pointless for me.

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

As it would be for me.

My local paper is also going to allow a set number of free articles per month. Of course being a local I'd almost always go over the limit.

[anomster.livejournal.com]

But the charge & the limit don't apply if you reach a NY Times article through a link (incl. from a search engine) rather than by going directly to the paper's website. Still, your subject-line pun applies (& is appreciated): the Times, it is a-changin'. @>)

[ponygirl2000.livejournal.com]

I love reading the paper in print form but I've cut down to only getting the weekend paper, during the week the content was pretty slim for what I was paying. Weekdays I check in with a couple websites that mostly have local event listings but also do a pretty good job of covering city hall and I also look at political blogs and the twitter feeds of some reporters I like. When I was visiting my hometown I noticed that the local paper, which used to be pretty lively, is now almost all wire service articles with only a page or two of local content - and of course their circulation is decreasing because no one's reading it. It's a sucky situation.

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

It's somewhat the opposite for me. The Sunday paper is almost a waste for me since I rarely look at more than what I would on a week day. Never was much for looking at the Sunday ads or classifieds. The Sunday paper is fairly inexpensive here compared to what it was in St. Louis or I might have already dropped it. I didn't bite when they started charging extra for the weekly TV magazine several years ago, since it's definitely something I can get on the net.

[sculpturelle.livejournal.com]

Changing times, to be sure. Local papers have a great opportunity at the moment but very little resources to explore it. I was offered a job at a successful local paper about 6 months ago (not as a journalist but as a very poorly paid sales/admin assistant). There clearly were enormous financial and competitive pressures despite the fact that their website (still free) was getting a huge amount of traffic. In many ways, I think the whole system will have to collapse before building itself up again on different foundations. Perhaps as not-for-profit ventures?

As for the 'paper' paper - I fear it is disappearing faster than I thought:(

Edited for grammar and to add this link: http://www.hudsongazette.com/ (http://www.hudsongazette.com/)

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

I think you're right about the collapse. It's just unsettling to be a reader caught in the middle.

[atpo-onm.livejournal.com]

Used to have two papers here for most of my life, a morning (liberal-leaning) paper and an afternoon (conservative-leaning) edition. (The Intelligencer Journal & The Lancaster New Era, respectively). They merged about three years ago, since it was just getting too costly to keep going the way they had. So, now there is a consolidated issue that goes out in the early morning, and that incorporates dual editorial pages so that the town's various political factions can argue with each other endlessly in what is no doubt a more convenient manner! Both original mastheads appear on the front page.

For me, if the paper stopped its print edition (they seem to be doing rather well, actually, so yay for them), I doubt I'd switch over to their electronic version. I almost never watch the news on TV with the exception of 60 minutes, which is of course a 'magazine' news show. I hate commercials, and one of the best things about print newspapers is I can easily ignore any ads that feature stuff I have no interest in. I can't do that for TV unless I wanted to time-shift everything with a VCR or DVR.

Oh, one remining great thing about the combo paper-- twice the comics!