Unless you have a wood stove or fireplace, who needs a pound of newsprint every day? Sure, paper is way more biodegradable than a Kindle, but why use those resources at all? A paper takes up more room than a mobile device, so the whole portability argument is no longer relevant. The battery life of our gadgets has increased to the point that unless you're a jabberjaw or music monger you're not likely to lose that 3G or WiFi ability before the day is out. Then there's the whole lag time problem. Without question, cable killed the newspaper star for most people. Even my grandparents get most of their news from TV (and I am not young). Honestly, about all the newspaper offers at this point is community news and a medium that works when the power is out. Older folks, technophobes or those in rural areas who can't afford satellite are newsprint's only stalwarts now, and I don't see those groups growing in number. If we could just get ubiquitous wireless broadband (or even mediumband) I think the e-book and e-paper market would explode. It could hold its own with the networks we have right now. The NYT and other publications could partner with an online distributor to sell their content at a price anyone could afford (think XM for online publishers). They already transmit their content to printers all over world every single day - this would be even simpler. If you aren't paying for server bandwidth the cost of online publishing is relatively cheap. That virtually assures the success of this business model..if, and only if the parties involved don't get greedy. Anyone with a keyboard can be an online journalist now. Only the quality of your content will set you apart, and if its good you CAN charge for it..just not very much per subscriber. The biggest problem for an online content provider who charges for its product is some guy still giving away decent material that overlaps its own. In that case...well, maybe such an organization should consider buying out these lone wolves or even putting them on the payroll. These folks may not have UC Berkley journalism creds, but so what? Half of the bloggers on the 'net do a better job of fact checking than the New York Times. Ultimately, the biggest advantage of newspapers is their breadth of coverage. If periodicals keep leveraging that ability they'll survive the transition to purely digital distribution and regain subscribers as the Twitter generation grows up. There's a ton of important news out there every day that TV and radio simply can't or won't report..not even on their websites. I get more news from the scrolling text at the bottom of the screen than I do from the talking heads, which is most likely straight off the wires.
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Unless you have a wood stove or fireplace, who needs a pound of newsprint every day? Sure, paper is way more biodegradable than a Kindle, but why use those resources at all? A paper takes up more room than a mobile device, so the whole portability argument is no longer relevant. The battery life of our gadgets has increased to the point that unless you're a jabberjaw or music monger you're not likely to lose that 3G or WiFi ability before the day is out. Then there's the whole lag time problem. Without question, cable killed the newspaper star for most people. Even my grandparents get most of their news from TV (and I am not young). Honestly, about all the newspaper offers at this point is community news and a medium that works when the power is out. Older folks, technophobes or those in rural areas who can't afford satellite are newsprint's only stalwarts now, and I don't see those groups growing in number. If we could just get ubiquitous wireless broadband (or even mediumband) I think the e-book and e-paper market would explode. It could hold its own with the networks we have right now. The NYT and other publications could partner with an online distributor to sell their content at a price anyone could afford (think XM for online publishers). They already transmit their content to printers all over world every single day - this would be even simpler. If you aren't paying for server bandwidth the cost of online publishing is relatively cheap. That virtually assures the success of this business model..if, and only if the parties involved don't get greedy. Anyone with a keyboard can be an online journalist now. Only the quality of your content will set you apart, and if its good you CAN charge for it..just not very much per subscriber. The biggest problem for an online content provider who charges for its product is some guy still giving away decent material that overlaps its own. In that case...well, maybe such an organization should consider buying out these lone wolves or even putting them on the payroll. These folks may not have UC Berkley journalism creds, but so what? Half of the bloggers on the 'net do a better job of fact checking than the New York Times. Ultimately, the biggest advantage of newspapers is their breadth of coverage. If periodicals keep leveraging that ability they'll survive the transition to purely digital distribution and regain subscribers as the Twitter generation grows up. There's a ton of important news out there every day that TV and radio simply can't or won't report..not even on their websites. I get more news from the scrolling text at the bottom of the screen than I do from the talking heads, which is most likely straight off the wires.
I'm sorry, I just don't feel like reading that.
It is possible to hit people over the internet....with a wall of text.
Heard of paragraphs?