Christian Science (Only on Your) Monitor

Not on my monitor they wontz be!

Honestly, haven't regularly bought a newspaper since 1997. Print magazines - only the economist as something to read on the train where the internet is fuzzy and also in very small print on a phone which hurts the eyes. Online, I refuse to click on links, so I guess this makes me a freeloader.

I'd worry about all my content disappearing, but I figure there is always going to be some smart creator of content who is still an idiot business savvy wise out there who thinks they'll make money somehow by providing free quality news/commentary on the web. Eventually each one will wise up (or have the creditors take all their gear) and fold, but by then someone else will be trying it themselves and I'll move on.

I think print news/entertaiment still has its place. I need that magazine in the doctor's office/exam room. To snuggle up with me in bed at night to help me fall asleep. A piece of heaven is laying on the beach with a stack of magazines (or a good book) by my side - not my laptop or Ipod downloaded entertainment.

Guess we'll start seeing more little advertising pop-ups on our internet news sites, eh? Like dropping another dollar in the collection basket...

I haven't bought a printed newspaper or newsmagazine for myself EVER. Literally. There is a free weekly paper that comes out with local news (and, more importantly, local movie times), I'll sometimes pick up one of those. I occasionally glance at someone else's paper, or flip through the stacks of Time and National Geographic Magazines that my family passes around, but was raised without an actual newspaper in the house - my parents were always disturbed by the waste of paper and flagrant conservative bias of local news sources, so around the time I was ten years old we stopped subscribing and we got all our news online or from other sources. Ever since I've lived on my own, everything I've wanted to know about has been available online. I don't think that printed papers are necessarily "bad", but they are a SERIOUS waste of paper and money, and my impression is that the folks who are attached to having a daily paper delivery are often the folks who aren't yet hip to the internet. I want choice, multiple sources, interactivity (beyond a few handpicked selections for Letters to the Editor), etc. And I also don't want to waste paper unnecessarily, or pay for something that I'm just going to read some small part of and then toss.

Newspapers are good for:
1) sticking under the edges of tables that rock
2) putting in the bottom of animal cages
3) making paper mache
4) cutting letters/words for ransom notes
5) cluttering up the kitchen table
6) coupons! which could probably be incorporated into the online version anyway.

Sorry to hear about the layoffs at TIME, as an employee of a company that has announced similar mass layoffs I can understand the probable doom and gloom around the office.

@loriinohio: "I need that magazine in the doctor's office/exam room. To snuggle up with me in bed at night to help me fall asleep. A piece of heaven is laying on the beach with a stack of magazines (or a good book) by my side - not my laptop or Ipod downloaded entertainment."

OK, I get that. good examples. I'm also adding "bathroom reading" to the list of What Printed Reading Materials are good for. You mention books, I'm currently torn on whether I would prefer to only get books digitally, or whether I would want print versions of books to carry around. I think that I wouldn't choose digital books over printed ones, for just the reason you mentioned - portability, the joy of curling up with a book, being able to make notes in the margins, etc. It wouldn't be the end of the world for all books to go digital, I'd adjust, but I hold printed books much more sacred than newspapers. . .

Oh, Shara! You make me sad, but, then again, I have a journalism degree. That said, I think it's a mistake to assume that people who get the paper "aren't yet hip to the internet." My guess is that many are like me--they can't get ENUF media. I get lots of info online all day, while listening to NPR. At night, I read the newspaper and magazines while watching TV. My sister was just here for a few days, and I had to go some withdrawal, watching my papers and mags pile up and my DVR load up (I did manage to sneak in some online time!).

You raise an interesting question about how you were raised, though. I was recently wondering about how that affects adult consumption. My mom subscribed to both Chicago papers when I was a kid, and I'd read them after school over ice cream. But then I went decades as an adult without the paper. I only subscribed again when I went back to school for my master's, and I've kept it up since then.

@bemused:
My avoidance of printed newspapers definitely doesn't mean I don't appreciate journalists - more power to you I imagine a big part of my perspective is a combination of how I was raised and the obnoxious conservative bias of my local paper, as well as frustration at watching so many people I know pay for the paper only to throw it away without much of a glance, creating a lot of waste all around. Who knows, if I lived somewhere where the paper was less biased (or biased in my particular direction) I might have more use (or less disdain) for it.

Just re-read my posting. It wasn't really "decades" that I went without the paper as an adult, I realized--just ages 19-35!! Don't want to paint myself as older than I am! And, honestly, part of my resistance was that I didn't want it piling up around my place. Thank God for recycling.