Comments on: Why people skip newspapers and read news on the web instead

By: Natalia

Natalia — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 14:58:33 +0000

I think that all newspapers should start to establish their online presence and transform their way of publishing into model of a news hub (like bbc, cnn etc.)

By: Aleks

Aleks — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 19:57:15 +0000

“newspaper crisis” – this is true. Internet is more popular then newspapers. It is more comfortable for reading.

By: Adrian

Adrian — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 13:57:00 +0000

Newspapers give you what they want you to read plus they have to publish something even if they don’t have something to say.

With RSS feeds you can get access to a lot of information and can easy filter out the “noise”

By: R2J WebWorld

R2J WebWorld — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 01:33:31 +0000

Occasionally, buying newspapers is still a must just to keep off my eyeballs at the computer but of course, there is more information found online. Why spend and waste paper if you can read news online?

By: John Stathon

John Stathon — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 19:36:56 +0000

Newspapers are going down sooner or later. Nowdays in a well developed society a huge procent of people have an internet connection and why should they buy a real newspaper when they can read the same thing, updated hundreds of times per day, in the online version of a jurnalist blog.

I don’t think that a real method exist for the newspapers to regain their position over the online media.

By: Daniel Payne

Daniel Payne — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 05:54:37 +0000

I agree that newspapers need to become relevant in order to survive. I just use RSS for the business news articles from http://www.oregonlive.com and have little need to actually buy my local newspaper.

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:27:39 +0000

@Greg Bowen: Feel free to replace “go away” with “be reduced to a tenth of what they are today”.

By: Greg Bowen

Greg Bowen — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:55:26 +0000

Newspapers will never go away – what about the reasons people read print as opposed to the web. People worried about drummers being replaced by drum machines too.

By: Cody

Cody — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 05:41:51 +0000

I would have to say that I skip the newspaper and go straight to the web. I biggest reason is that I’m only interested in a small section that is included in a newspaper or the newspaper doesn’t cover what I’m interested in. You can find a news site or a blog about any type of topic you are interested. I will agree that newspapers are slow. You can have your news instantly on the web, without waiting for the latest edition of the newspaper.

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:51:38 +0000

@SchizoDuckie: I hadn’t heard about that, and it’s a shame they let those kind of people even near a computer. The music industry already have a tax like that in place (in Sweden at least), let’s not expand it to news too :(

@Jamie Appleseed: Well, some would say that “News” are the newspaper industry identity, and skip (or down prioritize) the “paper” bit. I agree with you, there will always be a need for news is some form. Newspapers need to answer the question: How do people want their news delivered today?

@Andrey Zhukov: That’s up to each and every newspaper to choose: will we change, or keep doing what we’ve always done? From what I’ve seen the last five years, I think that picked not doing anything.

That said, there seem to be exceptions. The Israeli newspaper cited in your article, is surely onto something. If distribution is what newspapers are for, why not distribute other’s news? Like writers and poets. Love it, and hope to see more of that here in Sweden!

By: Andrey Zhukov

Andrey Zhukov — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 07:23:00 +0000

Newspapers are not dead and will not do that any time soon, they’ll simply evolve.

Books, radio, vinyl are all here with us, released from a heavy commercial pressure they rediscovered a stronger, deeper bond with us.

There might be a glimpse of where a newspaper can find it’s place, in a story, when on an average Wednesday that a very serious Israeli newspaper conducted a very wild experiment… http://www.forward.com/articles/107571/

By: Jamie Appleseed

Jamie Appleseed — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:37:14 +0000

Obviously newspapers can’t focus on the web instead of paper. That’s why they’re called newspapers – paper *is* their identity. Which is also why newspapers will die. News on the other hand will live strong and forever. There will always be news, each and every day (more or less relevant), it’s their inherent nature. And even some of the old news organizations might survive. However, the paper part is a dead tree. We’d better make sure to bury those newspapers in a casket made of iron – burying them in one made of tree would simply be too sadistic. Newspapers are dead, long live news!

By: SchizoDuckie

SchizoDuckie — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:19:28 +0000

This is a very relevant article to something that’s happening right now in The Netherlands.

Maybe you have read about it : Some Dutch researchers / newspaper lobbyists from last century were sent out on a (gouvernment sponsored) mission to figure out ways to give newspapers a boost into the 21st century)

What did they come up with? A plan to tax everyone that owns an internet connection for a couple of euros, because ‘news is not free’. LOL

My Opinion? Newspapers are kind of like the RIAA, the need for it will end within a couple of years.

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 21:52:01 +0000

@Kristoffer Nolgren: That’s one way of looking at it. I think one of the weak points of that view is that newspapers are one-way, something that the web is built to avoid. I too think that using the web to interact directly with readers will be more and more common. Exciting times!

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 21:48:47 +0000

@Robert Nyman: Yeah, newspapers are trying very hard to copy what they do on paper, to the web! Perhaps it’s time to do it the other way around?

I’m not really sure some mix of paper and web is the right one either. People have spoken about “digital paper” for ages without anything happening. Maybe newspapers should just surrender and go all web?