Imagine yourself reading a book.  Imagine the feel of the paper in your hands, the ease with which you turn the page, the thrill of wondering what comes next.

Now imagine yourself reading a newspaper.  Imagine the paper as it resists your every attempt to keep it straight, the woman next to you on the bus glaring at you as you elbow her once again trying to read that last comic or check the sports scores.

Newspapers as we know them are going the way of the dodo bird, and the newspaper industry is doing all it can to try and make sure we know that.  And while they slowly waste away in to nothing, where are people really getting their news?

Reading the newspaper

TV and radio seem to be maintaining a healthy percentage of their audience (amazingly enough radio even seems to have increased over the last year but that may be due to the increase in subscribers to satellite radio.) It would seem that people are relying on the internet more and more for their local and national news, and while this may not seem surprising, many people have pointed out that most newspapers offer most of their stories online anyways so why not just stop printing the damn things and get it over with?

The problem is that this basically amounts to cutting off their nose to spite their face.  Newspapers need that source of income to maintain a staff of reporters, editors, and photographers.  Online publication of news articles has, till now, been offered merely as a supplement to the print edition and there has been no real revenue structure behind newspaper websites.  Some papers have experimented with paid online subscription, but that turned out to be more of a turn off than a much needed profit machine, as most people would rather get their news from a free web portal such as MSN or Google News.

Additionally, killing the print versions of newspapers would alienate an entire generation of faithful print readers affectionately referred to as the elderly.  Many older people don’t have access to a computer and the internet, and eliminating print editions would eliminate an entire demographic.

It seems to be a matter of convenience these days, as mentioned before not many people are entirely thrilled by the idea of taming their local news paper.  My local newspaper measures 2ft x 2ft and the sections are now so thin that it literally won’t stay up on it’s own.  I picked up a copy this afternoon to check the classifieds and became so frustrated with it that I ended up sprawled on the floor with papers splayed everywhere, simultaneously crawling my way across the pages and fighting off my cat.

As I read through some of the larger articles I began to think of how much easier and more enjoyable it is to sit back and read something like National Geographic or Readers Digest.  Now if my local newspaper could come in a smaller magazine like format or was available on something like the Kindle (yes I realize the Kindle isn’t supported in Canada yet) that the level of convenience would increase dramatically. I personally would find it much more relaxing to be able to leaf through a magazine while planted on the couch than to wrestle with the current newspaper format, and that’s probably why I, along with many others, find it easier to just plug in to the internet to get our news.

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Post inspired by Lance at ImAddicted

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