Author Topic: Will you miss newspapers when they're gone? (Read 37431 times)

Tekzel · « **Reply #25 on:** March 08, 2010, 07:26 PM »

Doubt it. I don't miss them now, and they aren't gone yet. Haven't cracked one in... I don't even know how long. Has to be greater than 15 years.

MilesAhead · « **Reply #26 on:** March 09, 2010, 12:14 AM »

The whole bit about journalism reminds me of this radio talk host I used to listen to. Now and then some kid would call up asking how to get a start in "broadcasting." The host would say to the kid.. there's no such business as "broadcasting." I'm in the advertising business. This stuff I talk about is broadcast because advertisers are willing to shell out to advertise on this medium because I have a lot of listeners. There's no money in "broadcasting." Only in advertising. If you want to get into this business, find out about advertising, because that's what it is. No "broadcasting school" is going to teach you that.

AndyM · « **Reply #27 on:** March 09, 2010, 12:39 AM »

The daily paper in this part of Vermont and New Hampshire has local news that there's really no other way to get.

zxcvbn · « **Reply #28 on:** March 09, 2010, 06:28 AM »

Back in 1956 I remember sitting in an old hangar for our Saturday morning lecture. It was about current affairs, and we were enjoined to read one or more "quality newspapers" on a regular basis in order to keep ourselves informed.

Well, I did, and I can't say it did me much good.

A couple of years ago our local newsagent closed (and took with it the local Post Office). Their newspaper round ceased, was taken up by another newsagent a mile or so away, and then ceased again when the new people found they could not get boys or girls to operate it.

Since then we only buy a national paper infrequently at the local supermarket. We had withdrawal symptoms for a short while but those have passed, and I now see the national papers as full of trivia.

The local daily "The Northern Echo" published in Darlington has some good (local) stuff in it, and we always buy the "Darlington & Stockton Times" - a weekly - for the local area's news, and the abstruse farming information which we do not understand but enjoy reading. Each week they do a review of a local pub or restaurant which we can criticise if we know the place - or add to our list if we don't.

I think the idea expressed in our long ago lecture may have been good for a few more years after it was delivered, but became less and less in touch with reality as newspapers themselves switched to publishing opinion writers, and edged into the territory of what once would have been the preserve of womens' weekly magazines.

davidsgordon · « **Reply #29 on:** March 09, 2010, 03:20 PM »

there is nothing like a newspaper and a cup of coffee in the am.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #30 on:** March 09, 2010, 03:53 PM »

The local daily "The Northern Echo" published in Darlington has some good (local) stuff in it, and we always buy the "Darlington & Stockton Times" - a weekly - for the local area's news, and the abstruse farming information which we do not understand but enjoy reading. Each week they do a review of a local pub or restaurant which we can criticise if we know the place - or add to our list if we don't.
-zxcvbn (March 09, 2010, 06:28 AM)

I thought the Northern Echo was produced in Leeds? Anyway I get the D&S every week - mainly because there is a fair amount about people I know (so there is the gossip factor) and you get to know what is going on in local villages.

By the way "zxcvbn" (good name by the way are you originally Polish?) where about do you live - can't be far from me in Wensleydale

40hz · « **Reply #31 on:** March 09, 2010, 04:21 PM »

Did someone say Wensleydale?

Cracking!

Hermit2003 · « **Reply #32 on:** March 09, 2010, 04:34 PM »

My wife currently gets the newspaper "second-hand" from our neighbor once she's finished with it. She pages through it to find coupons and hands me the comics page.

Every now and then an article will catch my eye and I'll read it, but I probably get my hair cut more often than I read the newspaper.
-Deozaan (March 06, 2010, 02:28 PM)

I'm in a similar position. I live in a cabin in the woods with no running water and no winter road access, though you can see my priorities, since I do have electricity and high-speed DSL! I'm 67 years old, and have been a somewhat radical teacher in inner city schools, as well as a teacher of adults in Literacy and in English as a Second Language, both in community organizations and in the prisons. I'm passionate about politics and I keep very well informed through such sites as straightgoods.com and thetyee.ca (I am a Canadian), as well as Znet.org (I am a citizen of the international world as well) and all sorts of other sites, including news aggregators such as www.nationalnewswatch.com/. My local newspaper is somewhat useful for obituaries (at 67, I'm starting to find more and more of my friends in the obits!) and for local news, and to allow me to write letters to the editor, but really, I get my most important news through the various volunteer organizations I'm a part of, and through Facebook and the various local organizations I volunteer in. Besides, in order to pick up a daily paper if I did subscribe to it, I would need to drive (in snowless seasons) or hike (during the four to five months of winter) a mile down my slippery road every day to pick it up at the mailbox on the main road. That was manageable when I was going out to work every day, but not now, since I retired.

I would not like to see the newspapers disappear, but I think they have to accept that in this day and age we need more than the average local newspaper can offer. Some sort of compromise between newspapers and the Internet will have to take place.

Bill Steo · « **Reply #33 on:** March 09, 2010, 04:47 PM »

Every city and town needs a newspaper to do at least one essential thing: let the public know what the local government is doing and how. each town has its businesses which may, or may not, be serving the public as they should. Who's going to tell citizens about it if not the local newspaper?
Newspapers are essential to a democracy. Which is why all tyrants suppress try to suppress them.
Edmund Burke (1729 - 1797), a British politician, is supposed to have said "that there were three Estates in Parliament [the Lords Temporal, the Lords Spiritual and the Commons], but in the Reporters Gallery yonder, there sat a fourth Estate more important far than they all."
The internet and TV provide good news services. But none of them, and nothing else, can do what a local newspaper can do.
However, we do need a *new kind* of newspaper.... Anyone have any suggestions?
So says an old former editor of his town newspaper.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #34 on:** March 09, 2010, 05:43 PM »

Did someone say Wensleydale?
(see attachment in previous post)
Cracking!
-40hz (March 09, 2010, 04:21 PM)

That's the stuff Gromit - made just up the road from me.

JavaJones · « **Reply #35 on:** March 09, 2010, 06:06 PM »

Every city and town needs a newspaper to do at least one essential thing: let the public know what the local government is doing and how. each town has its businesses which may, or may not, be serving the public as they should. Who's going to tell citizens about it if not the local newspaper?
Newspapers are essential to a democracy. Which is why all tyrants suppress try to suppress them.
Edmund Burke (1729 - 1797), a British politician, is supposed to have said "that there were three Estates in Parliament [the Lords Temporal, the Lords Spiritual and the Commons], but in the Reporters Gallery yonder, there sat a fourth Estate more important far than they all."
The internet and TV provide good news services. But none of them, and nothing else, can do what a local newspaper can do.
However, we do need a *new kind* of newspaper.... Anyone have any suggestions?
So says an old former editor of his town newspaper.
-Bill Steo (March 09, 2010, 04:47 PM)

Then again, what about independent citizen journalism and discussion? Blogs, forums, even Facebook groups. I see them having at least as much power and relevance as a local paper, which may be more prone to influence from local deep pockets anyway. True though that sometimes not enough citizens will really run down a story to quite match up to *good* investigative journalism. On the other hand how many "towns" have good investigative journalism for local events?

- Oshyan

MilesAhead · « **Reply #36 on:** March 09, 2010, 06:30 PM »

The other thing killing them off, other than their own online editions that is, is outfits like ESPN moving into local sports coverage. They already have:
http://espn.go.com/losangeles/

As time goes on they'll encompass smaller cities, then smaller towns..
there won't be much for the local weekly to report except what's gonna'
be served in the high school cafeteria for the week.

johnk · « **Reply #37 on:** March 09, 2010, 06:52 PM »

Then again, what about independent citizen journalism and discussion? Blogs, forums, even Facebook groups. I see them having at least as much power and relevance as a local paper, which may be more prone to influence from local deep pockets anyway. True though that sometimes not enough citizens will really run down a story to quite match up to *good* investigative journalism. On the other hand how many "towns" have good investigative journalism for local events?

- Oshyan
-JavaJones (March 09, 2010, 06:06 PM)

As I alluded to in a previous post, once upon a time (i.e. 20 years ago) more or less very town would have at least one newspaper with a well-trained team of journalists (I'm talking about the UK here). Today, falling newspaper sales mean that is a thing of the past. And no amount of "citizen journalism" will replace it. Again, going back to my previous post, 20 years ago, journalists would attend every local council meeting. Meetings were divided into "part 1" (public) and "part 2" (private), where everyone apart from councillors got thrown out. Of course the private meeting generally contained the interesting stuff. It was part of the journalist's job to leave the meeting with the part two documents in his/her pocket (no, they didn't steal them -- it was all down to contacts). Good journalists could turn a vague whisper into a finished, accurate 250-word story in 20 minutes because, somewhere in their overflowing contacts books, they would have the names and phone numbers of everyone worth knowing on their patch. Citizen journalists tend either to ride hobby horses, or dip in and out on an ad hoc basis as subjects interest them, or as they stumble across news. Citizen journalism has a lot to offer, but it's no replacement for a professional newsroom in every town.

Expect wasteful local government spending to grow exponentially in the coming decades. And you won't know about it until it's too late to save your taxpayer pounds/dollars.

JavaJones · « **Reply #38 on:** March 09, 2010, 07:02 PM »

I dunno, I don't have a great deal of experience with local, professional journalism (though what little contact I've had has never particularly blown my socks off). But I do reckon government spending has ballooned quite nicely in the last 20 years. Maybe that's down to lack of proper reporting already creeping in during that time, though it hasn't really been a crisis for newspapers until the last 5, maybe 10 years. I'm also inherently skeptical of any "it was better in my day" subjective assertions, not that I doubt your experience or your character, just that it's not a particularly compelling argument.

- Oshyan

johnk · « **Reply #39 on:** March 09, 2010, 07:35 PM »

I dunno, I don't have a great deal of experience with local, professional journalism (though what little contact I've had has never particularly blown my socks off). But I do reckon government spending has ballooned quite nicely in the last 20 years. Maybe that's down to lack of proper reporting already creeping in during that time, though it hasn't really been a crisis for newspapers until the last 5, maybe 10 years. I'm also inherently skeptical of any "it was better in my day" subjective assertions, not that I doubt your experience or your character, just that it's not a particularly compelling argument.

- Oshyan
-JavaJones (March 09, 2010, 07:02 PM)

The fact that you know government spending has increased by given amounts is probably down to the fact that you've read/heard/watched reliable news reports. And while reliable media sources will probably remain at national level for the foreseeable future, it's at regional/local level that media scrutiny is vanishing. And that just cannot be a good thing.

parkint · « **Reply #40 on:** March 09, 2010, 09:01 PM »

A friend just sent me this TODAY and I think it is quite appropriate for this thread.
{Please forgive me if you disagree}

If you are 30, or older, you might think this is hilarious!

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious
diatribes about how hard things were. When they were growing up; what with
walking twenty-five miles to school every morning.... Uphill...
Barefoot... BOTH ways… yadda, yadda, yadda

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in
hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on my kids about how
hard I had it and how easy they've got it!

But now that I'm over the ripe old age of thirty, I can't help but look
around and notice the youth of today. You've got it so easy! I mean,
compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia!
And I hate to say it, but you kids today, you don't know how good you've
got it!

I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have the Internet. If we wanted to
know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves,
in the card catalog!!

There was no email!! We had to actually write somebody a letter - with a
pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in
the mailbox, and it would take like a week to get there! Stamps were 10
cents!

Child Protective Services didn't care if our parents beat us. As a matter
of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission to whip my
ass! Nowhere was safe!

There were no MP3's or Napsters or iTunes! If you wanted to steal music,
you had to hitchhike to the record store and shoplift it yourself!

Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio, and the DJ
would usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up! There were no
CD players! We had tape decks in our car.. We'd play our favorite tape
and "eject" it when finished, and then the tape would come undone
rendering it useless. Cause, hey, that's how we rolled, Baby! Dig?

We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and
somebody else called, they got a busy signal, that's it!

There weren't any freakin' cell phones either. If you left the house, you
just didn't make a damn call or receive one. You actually had to be out of
touch with your "friends". OH MY GOD !!! Think of the horror... not being
in touch with someone 24/7!!! And then there's TEXTING. Yeah, right.
Please! You kids have no idea how annoying you are.

And we didn't have fancy Caller ID either! When the phone rang, you had no
idea who it was! It could be your school, your parents, your boss, your
bookie, your drug dealer, the collection agent... you just didn't know!!!
You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

We didn't have any fancy PlayStation or Xbox video games with
high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like
'Space Invaders' and 'Asteroids'. Your screen guy was a little square!
You actually had to use your imagination!!! And there were no multiple
levels or screens, it was just one screen... Forever! And you could never
win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster
until you died! Just like LIFE!

You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on!
You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your
ass and walk over to the TV to change the channel!!! NO REMOTES!!! Oh,
no, what's the world coming to?!?!

There was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on
Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I'm saying? We had to wait ALL WEEK
for cartoons, you spoiled little rat-finks!

And we didn't have microwaves. If we wanted to heat something up, we had
to use the stove! Imagine that!

And our parents told us to stay outside and play... all day long. Oh, no,
no electronics to soothe and comfort. And if you came back inside... you
were doing chores!

And car seats - oh, please! Mom threw you in the back seat and you hung
on. If you were luckily, you got the "safety arm" across the chest at the
last moment if she had to stop suddenly, and if your head hit the
dashboard, well that was your fault for calling "shot gun" in the first
place!

See! That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it
too easy. You're spoiled rotten! You guys wouldn't have lasted five
minutes back in 1980 or any time before!

Regards,
The Over 30 Crowd

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #41 on:** March 10, 2010, 04:50 AM »

But we were happier back then

40hz · « **Reply #42 on:** March 10, 2010, 05:58 AM »

I was at a picnic last summer where a bunch of friends were discussing the late 60s and early 70s. After a while, one friend's 20 year old son somehat irritably remarked that the way everybody was talking made the era "sound like it was one big nonstop party."

My GF flashed him a wintery smile and said, "Yes, it was. Too bad you missed it. "

app103 · « **Reply #43 on:** March 10, 2010, 09:26 AM »

My daughter made a comment today in reference to the concept of "grandma's old things". (she is contemplating moving out and we were discussing what to do with her furniture, which was originally mine when I was a kid)

We usually think of that kind of stuff as the old dusty crap from ages ago, long out of style.

Sometimes this stuff gets handed down to the next generation or 2.

Now think of the kids of today and the things they are into. The music they listen to, the books, furniture they decorate the inside of the cabinets with whatever their favorite celebrities are, the clothes.

Some day they are going to be older too, and the stuff they have now may get passed to future generations.

Some kid in the future is going to end up with anarchy t-shirts, stuff decorated with Miley Cyrus, a bunch of bad punk CD's, and a heap of zombie & vampire related books.

What the heck is going to go through their mind when they see that stuff for the first time?

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #44 on:** March 10, 2010, 10:12 AM »

Hand-me-down furniture won't exist in the future in the same way. Out culture (I'm talking about US and Europe here) is too much based on disposable. Not to mention built-in-obsolescence.

For example I have a freezer in my garage that is at least 25 years old and still works perfectly. New freezers won't work properly in a cold environment and if my experience is anything to go by now have a life expectancy of around 5 years.

As for furniture ... who will want antique chipboard or MDF furniture?

40hz · « **Reply #45 on:** March 10, 2010, 10:44 AM »

Some kid in the future is going to end up with anarchy t-shirts, stuff decorated with Miley Cyrus, a bunch of bad punk CD's, and a heap of zombie & vampire related books.

What the heck is going to go through their mind when they see that stuff for the first time?
-app103 (March 10, 2010, 09:26 AM)

Possibly something along the lines of "WTF???"

KynloStephen66515 · « **Reply #46 on:** March 10, 2010, 11:45 AM »

Some kid in the future is going to end up with anarchy t-shirts, stuff decorated with Miley Cyrus, a bunch of bad punk CD's, and a heap of zombie & vampire related books.

What the heck is going to go through their mind when they see that stuff for the first time?
-app103 (March 10, 2010, 09:26 AM)

Possibly something along the lines of "WTF???"

-40hz (March 10, 2010, 10:44 AM)

Well, depending on how de-sensitized they are

Tekzel · « **Reply #47 on:** March 10, 2010, 12:12 PM »

Heh, that was a fun read. I grew up in the 80s (I was a teen then, and turned 18 in 1990) so that was a fun read and definitely hit home. Regarding the remotes, I remember our first remote. It was attached to the cable box with this long ass cord. The remote itself was a crazy long thing, about 12 inches long by 6 inches wide. You held it like a keyboard. It had all these switches, one for each channel, and when you flipped one of them the other one flipped back, changing the channel. So weird thinking about that now.

I have a "compare and contrast" essay due in my English comp class next Tuesday and had been wondering what topic to choose. This, I think, has given me the perfect topic

40hz · « **Reply #48 on:** March 10, 2010, 12:56 PM »

@Tekzel - take a look at this thread too while you're at it:

https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=21995.0

Further ruminations and reminiscences by fellow DC'ers who are old enough to be your...erm...older brothers & sisters.

Luck with your essay. (They still do those?)

ashish128 · « **Reply #49 on:** March 11, 2010, 08:26 AM »

I will but still I love nature and to save trees I will Prefer news on mobile. This way I will only opt for news I am interested in (say science) and leave the other ones out (say Politics).

Ashish