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I've usually got both of them open in the mornings, the mildly grimy, 3 year old Apple powerbook covered with faded Elmo stickers, alongside a section of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (although I quit coffee a few years back).
Publishing 2.0 is a fascinating read, in addition to the New York Times article linked to from the front page of the Publishing 2.0 site, Content and its Discontents (go on, register for the NYT online, worth it). The article is about how the revolution in content delivery will necessitate a change to content itself:
"All of the fascinating, particular, sometimes beautiful and already quaint ways of organizing words and images that evolved in the previous centuries — music reviews, fashion spreads, page-one news reports, action movies, late-night talk shows — are designed for a world that no longer exists."
Quite a sweeping statement.
Did I mention that the first half of this post was brought to you by a Gold Fibre antique ivory writing pad and a USA General 931T pencil?
8 comments:
I live in the Atlanta area and have seen our major daily shrink almost to non-existence. Then yesterday came the news that the Tribune Co. is filing for bankruptcy. I know the daily paper is probably doomed, but having always had one around since I was a child decades ago (my parents were inveterate newspaper readers), I will NEVER prefer to get my news via compuer with my morning coffee. It's a cumbersome way to read and aestheticlly deficient.
Well, I'm not a fan of reading the paper. Actually, I never have. I don't think I'll miss them too much if they ever go away, but knowing me, once they're gone for a while I will start to miss them. Especially if I start reading them in the next few years!
Never been a newspaper reader, really. I'm a news junkie now, but I generally get it online.
I like the IDEA of newspapers quite a bit more than newspapers themselves.
All news is colored by the cultural or political views of the writers and editors involved in producing it. I simply don't like the idea that i have to read news that's biased (in one direction or the other) because I happen to live in a town where the newspaper is run by people of one particular philosophical stripe.
With the net, I can get lots of sources of news: all of it is still colored or biased, certainly, but when you get lots of sources and lots of biases, you can begin to see what the real, unfiltered news is. IT's a bit like 3d vs 2d.
All true. The guy in the cubicle adjacent to mine listens ardently to NPR, and they were extolling the virtues of printed type and lamenting the loss of an age.
The most interesting part, I thought, was that they were discussing how back in the halcyon days of yore, newspaper reporters would follow a story for weeks, months, or if necessary, years. Not like these upstart bloggers who take a gander at wikipedia and then don the vestments of the learned.
As a side note, this is the same coworker who brings in the newspaper for everyone to read while they are...ah...indisposed. Otherwise I, like my esteemed peers above, would never read it either.
Many New Englanders are quite devoted to their local papers. But any news-savvy person cannot avoid the spectre of extinction, adding a melancholic aspect to newspaper reading and enjoyment.
When I buy the Boston Herald (just about every day), I'm casting my humble vote of support for their continuity and for papers themselves.
Unlike the online versions, real newspapers have a physical feel, and that sense of serendipity when a page spread juxtaposes comic strips, advice columns, opinions, and local stories. It's like comparing library browsing to downloading an e-book.
The newspaper seems to round out my day (I know- not your typical Gen Xer), and I do the puzzles, too. Many journal entries will begin with my markings in the Herald's margins during my errands.
It will be the sad end of an era. I watched our hometown newspaper go from a full-size, information-laden paper to a tabloid-size bad joke.
Video killed the radio star, ain't it a ... buggle. Although I can't quite see how the intranets survive the Big Shakeout either. Seems to me the few online providers who have broken even have done so mainly by cannibalizing their print editions. The Tribs are dying and the NYT group is in extremis. Just the other day, Stewart, with his customary exasperation, pointed out that the Grey Lady has taken out a $220,000,000 mortgage on its 8th Ave. palace to meet operating expenses. This while it has been doing yeoman's service reporting on the mortgage crisis. Oh the sick irony. Sure, there's going to be unfiltered news in the future...for the vanishingly small percentage of the population who can afford it. Who knows, if we really enter into Road Warrior territory it may herald the dawn of a new age of localism. So hang onto those manual typewriters.
We still get the daily paper, though its use is mainly comics and coupons. I gather news from online anymore. I don't relish the day when we're all sipping morning beverages over the Daily Download, but I'm not naive enough to think that papers will be around forever. This economic implosion we're going through will probably push more operations into the digital realm sooner than they (and I) would like.
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