Once upon a time Newsday was a great newspaper, the NY Times in tabloid garb for people on Long Island, and for several years with aspirations of becoming a 4th paper in New York.
Well, not any more. Roiled by a scandal over inflated circulation and dragged down by one staff cut after another after another, the paper's become a shell of its former self, a newspaper without any news. And now another 120 people are disappearing, including 25 more editorial staff.
I used to buy this paper every day. When I started JABberwocky in 1994 I switched to reading at the library to save a few bucks, but if I had to buy it on any given day, no problem. Now, it's not worth the fifty cents. Never.
Sadly, this is a situation that's coming up more and more, as newspapers confront plummeting print ad revenue and the ability of the web to provide information. One reason I can afford not to buy Newsday is that I can use the Daily Comics widget on my Mac Dashboard to get my comics, and that's about 25% of the newspaper reading time I don't need the newspaper for.
But should reading the funnies ever be 25% of my newspaper time? I am a confirmed newspaper addict, and I don't want to buy a newspaper. I don't imagine the solutions to the industry's problems are easy ones, but if the best they can come up with is to stop giving even their most addicted customers a reason to use each day...
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2 comments:
Newsprint is dead. Buy a laptop with wifi like the rest of us. It'll keep your hands ink-free, too!
And because so many newspapers and news channels have such non-newsworthy stuff, I check several countries' main news websites to find stuff that is. BBC news is one of the better ones, in my opinion.
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