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

[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!