On the demise of newspapers.........

[musiclawyer]

I have no problem paying, say, $12 a month for unlimited electronic access to a CONSORTIUM of newspapers-e.g. LA Times, NY Times, perhaps a few others.

I do have a problem paying $10 a month for one paper, such as my local paper--which is a rag, assuming it only existed on-line.

I don't think I'm alone here. But the premise is that on-line consortiums can be created and can be viable. That's where I'm out of my depth. Is this where we are headed? Can such consortiums make enough money to maintain a sembalnce of the fouth estate? Etc. So those of you who know what you're talking about, please dicuss.

[LisaM]

1. I don't understand who wouldn't want a paper copy delivered every day

I like to do the crossword puzzles, read the comics, the headlines, and the sports. And I want local.

We've never stopped subscribing, and I don't know others who have - is it just that younger people have never, and will never, subscribe to papers?

[Taverner]

2. Me!

Papers have always been messy for me, and I like doing keyword searches on stories

[marmar]

3. I love newspapers too.....I'm a GenXer, supposedly the generation that 1st stopped reading them.

...... but I love them. The wealth of info that you can carry around with you etc. I'll mourn their demise. Even though the Free Press has gone way down in quality, especially in the Gannett era, I have an emotional connection with it - I've been reading it since I was a child.

[louis-t]

8. I will cancel DFP as of March 31

If I can do without home delivery 4 days a week, I can do without it 7 days.

[EFerrari]

5. There used to be many papers out on my street in the morning.

The other day I noticed they were gone. I couldn't see one. We used to take two. And there were WSJ and NYTs up and down the block. Not any more.

I don't miss the hard copy any more.

[LuvNewcastle]

4. My local paper is a rag, too.

It's right-wing and it gets a lot of stories just plain wrong. The local tv station has a website, so if I want local news I check in there.

[Ron Green]

6. One interesting question is whether computer-based text satisfies the same literary need

as a newspaper (or a book, for that matter.) If we're moving into a post-literate (iconographic)era, does the computer serve to hasten that trend or can it take the place of printed text, supporting syntax and meaning as we (old people) know it?

[Jim__]

7. Computer based text doesn't really satisfy me, but I no longer subscribe to newspapers.

I subscribe to lots of magazines. The news in newspapers is one day old, and its a duplicate of what I've already read online. If newspapers covered news in-depth, I would still subscribe. But what I was seeing in newspapers was edited versions of stories from news-wires. I won't subscribe for that.

[summer borealis]

9. Magazines give me depth

Newspapers don't. That's why I've never understood papers' desire to make every story 4 paragraphs long ... except the damned vapid features.

[Winterblues]

10. I bet Iphone has an app for that too.

:shrug:

[LisaM]

11. Well we don't have a computer at home - which is not that rare

this will create yet another layer of barbed wire fencing in the digital divide. Our reasons for not having a computer at home are various - partly financial, partly because our space is very limited (we are in a city), partly because we don't want, as my SO put it, "all our board meetings to be 24/7".

Newspapers really provide a better pace. There are definitely advantages to some things being online, but our paper generally carries many local features, often involving months of research, that we would never get in an online version.

And something about doing the NYT crossword on newsprint (which our local paper carries) is much more appealing than printing it off a computer. Yccch.