Quote:
Originally posted by Undertoad
And one more thing. These "newspapers" you speak of. I've heard of them, but it's been a while. Isn't that where they used to cut down tons and tons of trees, mash them into pulp, run that through rollers, just to deliver it to big industrial presses, to print "news" that is up to 24 hours old by the time it reaches you?
How quaint. How wasteful!
Print is dead. I get better news from Yahoo and CNN, better editorials from 100 different websites, and better "letters to the editor" from here. And the local papers duplicate their dead-tree models on their websites.
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Tony,
I respect your opinion, but this was dreadfully misinformed. Print isn't dead. Print is alive. Much more so than the net. The 'duplicate' papers are financially unviable: the NYT and WP couldn't produce one hundredth of their in-depth reporting through website financing. Where do you think they get all the money from to pay their foreign correspondents, journalists, editors, and freelance writers? It sure as hell isn't from banner ads.
The 'better' news from Yahoo or CNN are usually piped straight from Reuters or the Associated Press, without any perspective or background. The vast majority of the news provided for our western eyeballs is pre-cut down to size on the web, so we can easily digest it. As the vast majority of people don't read news items that take longer than 30-60 seconds to read, most sites tailor 'content' to the smallest common denominator. Yes, even the my.yahoo-type sites.
The editorials in decent national papers beat pretty much anything on the web; the amount of research materials and existing knowledge in a major newspaper office (and I'm not talking about the New York Post here) is unbeatable when it comes to putting the world into perspective. Editorial knowledge and experience isn't something you pick up from hacking together a 'My Opinion Here' website.
Newspapers aren't about news, and the news aren't 24 hours old. News deadlines can be as short as 10 hours if I pick up a paper in the morning when I get on the subway to read it on the ride to work.
Quaint? Wasteful? Paper is easily recycled, and trees can be regrown. A decent national paper is $0.25, and brings you unparalleled width and depth of news and BACKGROUND, all in one well-organized, portable, easy-on-the-eyes package. You can read it in a coffee shop, and socialize with others - *around a paper*. What is the investment cost in a computer? Internet connection? Energy? Time and effort to browse the net for all the news you want? Hunt down background information? Ensure that the people who wrote it have at least some cursory knowledge of the topic? Editorial integrity? Sure, there are some tools that help you, but in the end it's a horrible waste of time and effort, trying to keep your fingers on the pulse of information that is shallow, opinionated by badly-educated people, and often without the proper context, all under the pallid glare of a CRT tube.
If you think that you can truly get better editorials from 100 websites than from the New York Times or Washington Post, please do try to get a College education in the arts, preferable a Social Science like Political Science or Economics. Once you understand how much underlying information you aren't being told by the 'popular media', you will see the world differently.
Sure, the NYT and WP have websites. But those websites simply couldn't exist in their current form without their print counterparts who finance it all, and who provide all the 'meat'.
Wasteful? Quaint? $0.25 buys you the world. Try waking up at 8am on a weekday, go out to buy a copy of the NYT or WP, and sit down with a decent cup of coffee (Starbucks if that's what you like) and READ. Not just the main pages, sports, and comics - but the entire paper. Don't skim, read. When you're still there, two hours later, understand that there's more to the world than just the web's click-a-minute, pre-chewed, pre-thought, pre-processed synaptic pulses.
News on TV is dead. Their agenda is to sell advertising minutes, not to inform. Quality papers have an audience that's slightly more traditional: people who buy US Today might watch Fox News, and that's all fine and dandy. But if you read the NY Times, you may as well try to see if your cable package offers BBC World News.
Yeah, I'm sure there're great news sources on the web. Sure, TV news can be decent. Someone will post an URL that has incredible editorials and awesome in-depth reporting from around the world, for free, thus disproving everything I said.
Until then - do yourself a favour and pick up a decent paper. Your brain will thank you. Stop thinking in 2-second flashes. Don't give in to cravings. Refuse to accept the need for immediate satisfaction. Fight the power.
X.