Steve: And it becomes like a bunch of ships passing in the night. You don't know what's going on in those communities, and they don't know what's going on in yours.
Leo: Right. Does that seem like an efficient model?
Molly: I know! I can't stand that. The way you described it sounds ... I mean, I never would have thought that the newspaper version, you know The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times elitist agenda setting, would actually seem like a broader model. The way you're describing it sounds kind of horrible, like self selecting news is the death of news.
To me, this sounds sort of nightmarish. And of course, it currently depends on the existence of primary news sources, which in the Internet world, is almost always newspapers. On the same TWiT episode, Mark Fraunfelder said "I've always thought that there's kind of a virtuous circle between bloggers and newspapers because they help each other advance stories all the time," and this is essentially the truth as it exists today. Bloggers are primarily secondary sources, and in some cases, tertiary sources (when they comment not on the papers, but on another blogger's statements).
I'm not attached to newsprint. In fact, I rarely buy a newspaper. If I do, it's always a Sunday paper, simply because if I'm in the mood to scan a paper, I want to have a lot to scan. But I get most of my news online. I try to read a large variety of sources, and I sometimes will read up to ten articles on the same topic, simple to get depth. The Internet affords me an opportunity to get a wide variety of opinions on topics.
However, it also affords me the ability to select which topics are important to me. In my case, almost 80% of my news intake is technology related, whether it's business news about Internet startups, analysis of competing gadgets, or gossip news about Internet personalities. In a newspaper, that's not true. I may not always get the depth of coverage I want, but I always get a breadth of coverage on a variety of topics.
Some of that is alleviated by scanning aggregate news sources, like Digg, Reddit, or Newsvine but I don't necessarily do that everyday, and even if I did, those communities are very different from each other. News that is important to Digg readers is not necessarily prioritized the same on Reddit. Ten years ago when you walked into your office, there was always a general consensus of what "The Headlines" were. That is no longer true. I rarely know what people are talking about on certain topics, and they rarely know what I'm so heated about. Newspapers created a national voice. That national voice is really the most serious casualty in the war between print and online media.
Article comments
1 - Karen Rice
The only reason I buy a newspaper is for local news, which doesn't get on the local newspaper website very often or in a timely fashion; and then I buy it only if there is something controversial which may be good blog fodder (not much chance of that, this is a non controversial community, for the most part.)
Sometimes I buy the Sunday paper to curl up with on the couch and have a cuppa java with it...you just don't get that same feeling with a laptop.
2 - Dan Miller
We live in a rural area in Panama, where it is difficult to find even a Spanish language newspaper, let alone one in English. So, I rely on the internet, through which I can get Panamanian national newspapers translated into English (not well, but better than my own translations). The various mainstream U.S. sources are readily available, and sources such as Breitbart.com provide links to lots more. Everything is out there, and all that is necessary is to look. I don't miss newspapers much at all.
There is, regretfully, one exception: there is no way to housebreak a puppy via the internet.
Dan Miller
3 - Douglas Mays
Newsprint dying? hhhmmm...I hope not. Newspapers and books are nice and quiet. And a much better way to gather a lot of news. Not being micro-thought limited to links on a selected subject. One misses a bunch of news that way.
The main reason for me is that ARE YOU KIDDING? Staring at some damn screen as a window to the world? Carrying a laptop as a newspaper?
It keeps one from becoming 'screened out' by reading off of newsprint. Those who complain about trees being cut down for paper, Uh yes, but generally trees are not cut down specifically for paper. Paper comes from shaving made from logs cut for construction purposes.
Anyway, the newspaper rules. Reading comics off of some bright screen? Try hanging one on your corkboard.
DM