Apr 01
The newspaper business is falling faster than AIG stock these days!! In fact today, the Chicago Sun-Times announced it’s going bankrupt and many out there are saying that print news media is indeed dead in it’s current form.
The role of newspapers in our society has very much helped shape local communities and given balance to the political landscape by having multiple voices and opinion. When you end up in a one newspaper environment, or worse, no newspaper at all, you get a skewed perspective of the local pulse and opinions of the community. I wonder how these voids will be filled?
Many of the generation X are reading the on-line version of newspapers rather than the print version. It costs less. I’m sure this has some impact with it. On a side note, currently there is a certain widely read web comic (*cough* PVP * cough*) that is promoting a new T-Shirt that reads, “I’m Killing Newspapers, by Reading Webcomics”. At the New England Webcomics Weekend, Mr Kurtz was selling them. Obviously, I’m not blaming him. He is just prospering from the situation. Best to him.
Hey, what happened to the Apple on Hodges laptop. Did he finally upgrade to a “real” computer?! lol!!!
It’s to bad print news media doesn’t tackle the web format more aggressively to keep themselves relevant and/or afloat. They need to embrace it and reinvent themselves!
Kurtz has a point, as a kid I read the newspaper for the comics and that’s what leads you into reading the news as an adult. Online comics are so much more entertaining than print comics (which are generic and antiseptic due to newspaper regulation and syndicate requirements). Now that I get comic fix online, I finally decided that getting my news from the web was just as convenient and my newspaper has an online edition– free!
And Gary, shhhhh!!! You weren’t supposed to notice the missing apple, cause I sure didn’t ! *grin*
The newspapers themselves were the voids. I’m proud of people for finally standing up to their haughty overpriced everything, nationwide-littering and BS standards of quality. Yeah!
I think Gary is oversimplifying it a bit. I’m certainly not Gen X (I’m in my 50s) and I get all my news online. And it isn’t just about cost, it’s also about convenience, and choice. Why walk out to the street and hunt for a wet newspaper under the bushes when I can just sit at my desk and read any newspaper I want? Why read our ABYSMAL local paper (with its absurd political slant) when I can read the NY Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, LA Times, or any of the hundreds of papers indexed in Google News? With a simple search, I can read articles on any topic from any number of papers.
Also, the papers themselves are much to blame for their own demise. Most of them look about the same as they did when Abe Lincoln was shot. The most they have done to “keep up with the times” is to add a little color ink here and there. There was a talk recently at T.E.D. about how design changes can turn a paper around:
http://video.ted.com/talks/podcast/JacekUtko_2009_480.mp4
His designs are astounding, and would certainly convince a lot of people to pick up a paper they walked by on a news stand.
I’m pretty mixed on the disappearance of newspapers.
On one hand, newspapers employed a few of my uncles
(at the late Philadelphia Bulletin… one of my Uncles had been an editor), and my cousin Bill is an editor at The Cleveland Plain Dealer. On the other hand, newspapers will stick with 80 year old comics that should have been retired when their creators died. Does anyone still read Blondie or Marmaduke?
You nailed it on that one.
Newspapers main issue is their censorship. Say anything politically incorrect or edgy in a paper and there’s tons of backlash and even boycotting. Do the same on a website and the world flocks to see what is being said and how over-the-top it is.
Censorship is fine as long as it doesn’t result in dullness.
I self-censor, since my children and mother are going to see my work, but I agree tha newspaper strips are over-censored (a.k.a. dull). I also don’t appreciate the re-runs of the classics. Some of them are not even good anymore. The space should be made available to new artists, although if the medium is on a death spiral, perhaps it is better to stay off it.
In the beginning I was also kind of reluctant and tamed my comics dialog as well…. but then I remembered this is the web and I need to be more authentic with language and behavior. So while I am slowly becoming more suggestive, I’ll never delve into outright vulgarness.