News Worth Buying On Paper 106
theodp writes " Last night,' confesses Business Insider's Henry Blodget, 'I did something I very rarely do: I bought a newspaper. Why? 'Because there was some news in the newspaper that I wanted that wasn't available online for free [a hyperlocal zoning story].' The problem in the news industry, suggests Blodget, is there is way too much commodity news coverage of the same stories, so it has to be given away for free. To be able to charge for news, Blodget suggests, you need more news that can't be found anywhere else. So, is there any type of news that you're still willing to pay for these days?" I've recently discovered that a newspaper in The Villages, Florida publishes a monthly list of "Golf Cart Crashes (With Injuries)," googling for which only seems to bring up ads for lawyers specializing in that area, so paper will have to do.
I'm still reading the paper on... paper (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the really good in-depth articles are not available online, unless you pay. And I prefer to read at leasure on a large tabloid format, instead of on my mobile or laptop.
That said, there is a whole generation growing up who thinks the generic news with 5 lines of information and 2000 lines of unwarranted conclusions are the standard for news. A fertile field for would-be demagogues.
Re:I'm still reading the paper on... paper (Score:4, Interesting)
Not owning a TV the internet is my primary news source. The most valuable publications on the internet to me are The Guardian and DER SPIEGEL. And even though those two have an excellent and supposedly selfsufficient online presence I can tell the journalistic difference. The online stuff reports mere news. The kind of stuff you can buy off Reuters, AP and other newsbrokers. They focus on speed. The print editions focus on analysis and are a bit more thorough as they can obviously spend more time in the archives. The Guardian gets pumped onto my Kindle via Amazon and even if the legendary lack of editing on The Grauniard sometimes is more than a bit aggravating it does make my daily commute a little bit retarded. DER SPIEGEL on the other hand is a weekly periodical and comes with very lengthy reports. I do not know of an equal to it worldwide. I also try to read Die Zeit and have been known to do so for the last 20 years but it is a pure opinion piece front to back and it is as thick as your average phone book.
I've given up on Le Monde and the NZZ due to lack of time.
If you compare these newspapers to their online presence or even worse news on TV there is no better way to keep yourself informed. And there is no alternative to reading a lot of newspapers from as many countries you can do. Otherwise you might be lead to the misconception that there is such a thing as a simple truth
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I've found the "Very Lengthy Reports" are seldom worth reading.
Most of them are simply historical rehashes and interview material loaded with selected and often biased viewpoints, all tossed in to increase bulk and the appearance of gravitas without actually adding much real or new information. Once you get past a certain size you end up seeing more bias creep into the story, mostly that of the reporter.
That coupled with wild inaccuracies introduced by journalism majors, (that even a brief glance through W
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Re:I'm still reading the paper on... paper (Score:5, Informative)
That said, there is a whole generation growing up who thinks the generic news with 5 lines of information and 2000 lines of unwarranted conclusions are the standard for news. A fertile field for would-be demagogues.
Oh yes, the kids today, they don't know the value of the printed medium. Always in a hurry. In olden times it was different. The periodicals are further condensed by the daily papers, which will give you a summary of the summary of all that has been written about everything.
Oh wait. That was written over a hundred years ago. You kids today can't even come up with original bitching and whining!
http://xkcd.com/1227/ for some more interesting quotes!
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I know that XKCD, of course. And certainly you've a point. But research shows that the readers of papers are growing older. Here are some graphs (in Dutch):
http://www.journalismlab.nl/2013/02/hoe-oud-is-de-krantenlezer/ [journalismlab.nl]
The first graph depicts the average age of the reader (not necessarily the subscriber) of the papers, the last graph depicts the percentage of readers of free versus paid papers in each age group (red = free, blue = paid).
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I find the physical paper a better way to get a summary of news I didn't care to seek out
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Badger jizz. I can do calculus, kinematics and statistics. My kids can barely count to twenty.
Re:I'm still reading the paper on... paper (Score:5, Insightful)
Badger jizz. I can do calculus, kinematics and statistics. My kids can barely count to twenty.
Your fault.
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Either way, the younger generation isn't stupider than yours; it's just younger.
Badger jizz. I can do calculus, kinematics and statistics. My kids can barely count to twenty.
And how good you could do calculus when you were five?
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At least as well as you speak English.
But at least you got the joke, unlike that idiot icebike and the twerps who modded him up.
We subscribe to the "paper" paper (Score:2)
We only get the "paper" edition on Sundays, but I read the digital version (as they refer to it) daily. I was going to give up the print version completely; however there's essentially no cost advantage in doing so. Oh well, having newspaper around occasionally turns out to be useful, anyway.
I'm the only one who reads it, though. I don't really get why my wife and daughter aren't interested in the news (especially local news, which isn't effectively available elsewhere) - but it's obvious there are more peo
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Stop giving the News attention and all News will cease to exist, except locally. Having News is part of our evolving language, without it we wouldn't have known where Mcafee was or Snowden; and we would've been no wiser.
Printed News is much more informative than Television News; or as the TV execs call it now: Entertainment. Or at least, a little more entertaining than watching Flies buzz around a decomposing carcase. Except Flies don't spread lies.
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We only get the "paper" edition on Sundays, but I read the digital version (as they refer to it) daily. I was going to give up the print version completely; however there's essentially no cost advantage in doing so. Oh well, having newspaper around occasionally turns out to be useful, anyway.
I don't find a lot of cost advantage in giving up the print version, but there is certainly a convenience advantage to having the digital version delivered to your device. You also don't end up with the 50% instant throw-away advertising sections in most Digital editions.
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Yeah, that high quality print-news media. *snort*
With rare exception, traditional print news is as much a joke as 24x7 news channels.
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So you paid for it anyway (Score:4, Insightful)
How much did you pay for the paper?
How many physical ads in the paper were you "forced" to glance over?
On the bright side, at least your viewing habits were not tracked. (Probably!)
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Just today I renewed a subscription for 365 days of delivery to my front door. $228.00 gets me not only the news, but something to line the cat's litterbox, package filler, and tabletop protection for those messy kitchen table projects.
And the ad's don't jiggle, make noise, change color or otherwise become overtly obnoxious that I want to download Ad-Block. I don't mind a little advertising...sometimes I want to see what is out there.
Finally, I don't mind if my greasy fingers get on the paper.
Try killing a
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How many physical ads in the paper were you "forced" to glance over?
Funny thing is, the ads are why I pick up the local print papers. That's the easiest way to find out what is going on locally, what movies and bands are playing, and what special events I might not want to miss. Doing that all online would probably involve going to twenty different websites and going to the paper's website is unreliable for the same purpose as the banner ads don't rotate in any order.
We still read the local paper ... (Score:5, Interesting)
My wife and I still read the local rag (The Press Democrat) because, although we've read most of the national and international news online 1 or 2 (or sometimes even 3) days before, there are stories in Sonoma County (and parts north) that simply don't show up anywhere else. It used to be owned by the NY Times organization, but it was recently bought by a group of local investors who are emphasizing the Local News aspect.
We might switch to the electronic version of it, but we will not lose our need to know what's happening in our own community.
Mod parent up. (Score:3)
That is what is killing the newspaper business (IMO). Anyone can get the AP stories instantly now. If something happens in Washington D.C. there will be dozens of identical reports about it.
If something happens in your town you might catch it on a local news show. Unless they're also busy covering wha
Back in the day (Score:1)
Before the WWW (and into the dotcom era), big city newspapers could afford to carry large staffs of professional reporters, so I bought a daily newspaper on the newstand more often than not (50 cents back then IIRC because they also had more ads). Often I couldn't finish a newspaper in one sitting so I'd fold it up and take it home, there used to be *lots* to read in the better papers.
Then Craigslist took away a lot of the ads, and people started getting their news online too. Newsroom layoffs became an
A ghost of the past (Score:1)
I think this is something that is going to change soon, too. Eventually, even newspapers will be found online. I mean, the only thing keeping paper printed news around is the fact that a large enough portion of the country still doesn't have a computer, like old people or the poor. Sooner or later, local news will migrate online, using ads and views to generate income enough to run the news, much like how the newspaper industry works now.
Even with that in mind, the amount of money made by local readers of l
Duh (Score:2)
Reprinting the same stories as everyone else is cheap. Actually researching and writing your own stories costs money, particularly if you spend more than ten minutes on each one.
I'm amazed (Score:5, Funny)
Woman awarded $4.3 million in golf cart crash suit (Score:2)
There's money in chasing golf carts as well as ambulances: San Anselmo woman awarded $4.3 million in golf cart crash suit [marinij.com]
Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Funny)
There should be a rule 34 for lawyers: no matter how obscure or weird it is, there will be a lawyer that specializes in it.
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There is, though! There are even ads for some of them right in the same section of the paper (of course ;)).
It's sad when people are badly injured, but many of the accidents described are related in funny police-blotter way.
the 'problem' with newspapers... (Score:1)
is that the people that make the money decisions don't know the difference between a 'blog' and a 'news story'
it's all just 'text' to them...or 'content'
tech industry types may not understand the news business, but we sure as hell know the concept...
why is Microsoft so alienating to users? b/c it tries to make everything proprietary...locking users out of features!
this article, with it's notions of 'finding proprietary content to charge for' as a way to save newspapers...well...
it's the exact opposite!
the n
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There is nothing wrong.
Using far too much linespacing.
Nor punctuation.
(Or capitalization)
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I don't...when I type it out it is tl;dr...then i go back and summarize....
that makes it look the way it does...I've tried to take a post that started with 6 or 7 paragraphs with full thesis statments and supporting sentences and put them into a readable format for /.'ers
i'm trying to dodge trollers while still taking a discernable position that could be debated...often I find myself resorting to the same tricks and shorthand humans use in verbal conversation...that's why i
I'd pay for... (Score:5, Interesting)
An online paper with a set of sliders. That way I can choose to receive 70% hard news articles 20% book reviews and 10% human interest. On the human interest I can dial 0% celebrity gossip, 60% cat pictures and 40% heart warming stories of strangers helping old ladies.
Someone else can dial 70% showbiz, 20% financial and 10% international news.
OK so I may have made up these percentages and categories, but I think a tailor made paper like that could be successful.
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Google News?
What I really want is a unified commenting service for news stories and then one that increases the salience of comments that add to the story. Slashdot comment system-like, but better. One of the most useful additions to me would be increasing the salience of (upvoted) user-contributed links (accompanied by a small description) and comments of the "Informative" kind.
As much as people may hate them, something like Google+ / Facebook could be good platforms for this. They aren't yet, as their sim
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The problem with online comments is that once you get a certain number of people commenting they just turn into a lowest common denominator sophistic mess.
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The problem with online comments is that once you get a certain number of people commenting they just turn into a lowest common denominator sophistic mess.
Well, that is the way it is in a lot of systems currently.
I'm pretty sure that including things like automatically calculated scores for comments based on correct spelling, grammar, word use, sentence length, etc. would help allow filtering out a lot of crap. Make filtering on the score optional and there's no harm done, just the providing of an extra tool.
Sure, it may filter out some insightful comments that happen to be written in a terrible way, but in my experience those are very rare.
Something like thi
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Our local paper (The News Tribune, based in Tacoma, Washington) has an iPad app that, while it doesn't have the "sliders" you mention, divides the stories by categories - local news, national/world, sports, entertainment, etc. it's simple to see what you want to see and skip what you don't.
There is a "top stories" section that, like a newspaper front page, contains a hodge-lodge of items from all the other sections... but it's just a section like every other, and can be trivially ignored if you wish.
It's a
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An online paper with a set of sliders. That way I can choose to receive 70% hard news articles 20% book reviews and 10% human interest. On the human interest I can dial 0% celebrity gossip, 60% cat pictures and 40% heart warming stories of strangers helping old ladies.
Someone else can dial 70% showbiz, 20% financial and 10% international news.
OK so I may have made up these percentages and categories, but I think a tailor made paper like that could be successful.
but a newspaper like that is useless, treating news like they're a bucket to pick content from by the kilo.
oh wait I think that explains the downfall of news.. the editors think like that and the bucket is the international newsfeeds. I mean, might just as well read reuters directly.
I will pay... (Score:2)
I will pay for news which are:
1. Interesting.
2. I didn't know already.
3. Is researched with background facts documented.
4. Is well written.
But this requires skilled reporters and writers. Which you have to pay for ! Something to think of for publishers ?
News worth *buying*? (Score:2)
There isn't any, in any format. Besides, there isn't any 'news' reporting anymore. Its all about bias and commentary, not raw facts.
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Exactly. Get some paper and a pen out and go dig through your local paper. Remove the ads, the bullshit "Metro" and "Living" and "Sports" and "Weather" sections. Scratch out the comics and classifieds. Scratch out all of the re-printed AP stories. Now, slice out most of the Business section which is just shallow repeats of what is already elsewhere. Same for the National/World news stuff.
What you're left with is pretty anorexic.
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It's not just biased. It's complete propaganda. Why should anyone pay to have their opinions warped into someone elses?
I would pay. But newspapers do it wrong. (Score:5, Interesting)
The development in news is kinda disheartening. I can't talk about your country, obviously, in mine we get more and more of low quality papers, some being pushed onto you for free (literally. You open your door and there's a newspaper hanging on your doorknob, not that you ever signed up for one). You can pick up newspapers on your way to work in the subway or at the train station. For free.
Quality-wise you're dealing with the worst kind of bull that you could possibly think of. 99% opinion, 1% weather forecast and quiz page. Of course, you cannot SELL a newspaper like this. Never. Not only do I get that kind of crap pushed in my face (literally...), I can get the same kind of "quality" (and even better) online.
I think if you want to SELL your news, you have to deliver quality. Give me information. Not opinion, not yellow press nonsense, not articles that were copy/pasted from some online news source or some news agency, i.e. the same crap I can get for free (and often get whether I want to have it or not). Give me well researched articles that go beyond the surface, on topics that actually matter. Do an exclusive interview with an interesting person, a politician with a vision (who doesn't just repeat whatever bull his party wants to spew), report about stuff that matters, send a reporter there and ask the people around for their view. Ignore the "official" bull and dig deeper.
THAT is what journalism is about. For everything else, I already have more than I could possibly want, and I will most certainly not pay for it. If anything, you'd have to pay me to be better than the rest of the crap.
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I'd be okay with opinions as long as the bias was clearly stated and the facts were presented to support it.
And focus on
Re: I would pay. But newspapers do it wrong. (Score:3)
This is what I was going to say. I'd pay for well researched news on major events instead of the speculation and opinion sites put out in the first 30 seconds of hearing about something.
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Everyone says that, but a basic fact of the universe says that it is vastly cheaper and easier to deliver unprocessed information than it is to deliver carefully filtered and processed information. In other words: by the time your well researched news is ready to be printed it is no longer news and it will have cost a lot of money to research and write.
Another thing to keep in mind is that in-depth journalism is more or less political, because the filtering and processing of the information is done by peopl
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Which is why I don't pay for news anymore....
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This is what I was going to say. I'd pay for well researched news on major events instead of the speculation and opinion sites put out in the first 30 seconds of hearing about something.
If you're looking for well researched articles etc. try The Economist [economist.com].
Or if you want a daily newspaper, try The Wall Street Journal [wsj.com].
*shrug* I find them worth paying for.
otoh, if this thread is just a rant-fest about how most news sources are lame...
*shrug* while I don't disagree, that observation isn't newsworthy.
No (Score:1)
There is a weekly paper her in Norway called Morgenbladet (probably named from the time yonks ago when it was daily) that seems to do actual journalism.
But apart from that, I prefer olds instead of news: Retro Gamer. New magazines all write about the same things, RG write about totally different stuff (and which actually takes some reporting and investigating to find out).
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I subscribe to Morgenbladet and I'm trying out some subscriptions on a kindle now after having pushed a lot of articles to it via readability or instapaper. Figured if I push a lot of their articles, might as well subscribe—they're not as expensive as daily newspapers and I guess a little fiscal stimulus doesn't hurt.
The news (and opinions) I'm willing to pay for don't seem to come out on a daily basis.
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The problem is that it is a cycle for newspapers:
1: They go cheap on local news, buying AP articles, or just making some report on the English royal baby, the next iPhone rumor, some celeb in rehab, or A-Rod's latest antics. Stuff that would make them worth reading gets shelves for filler.
2: People move to other sources because the same pictures of $CELEB in rehab are on the Net for free, as opposed to having to pay something.
3: Said site starts more with a paywall, or having more intrusive ads.
4: More
Facts vs. news reporting (Score:2)
Raw facts are easy to report. I suspect most people get that from more direct sources rather than conventional news outlets. What the news outlets need to do is start doing the legwork, the analysis, the digging that goes beyond the raw facts.
Example: here in San Diego there's a flap over the mayor being accused of sexual harassment. What makes me raise an eyebrow is the line-up on the accusing side (the city attorney the mayor embarrassed by chewing her and her department out over her prosecution of the Bo
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Market Size? (Score:2)
The bigger question for me is, what is the future of investigative journalism? Will we have a media that is available globally, that asks the questions people in power (corporate, state, religious) don't want asked? And how to we pay for that - is there enough of a market there?
Most newspapers (Score:2)
The Guardian Weekly (Score:4, Informative)
The Guardian Weekly is, in my opinion, a great weekly paper with many in-depth articles, most of which from an objective point of view. And even if they are subjective, this is usually clear, and gives another interesting view on the matter. The news is "worldly" (ie. not about Justin Bieber's latest haircut) and the result of a careful selection of the most interesting pieces from various other newspapers.
More importantly, because it is a weekly paper (and on top of that a tabloid), the amount of fillers is seriously reduced, and all articles are newsworthy and readable.
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+1, take out a subscription today. Worth being aware that its coverage of the U.K. news is from a specific perspective - it's pretty much the house paper of the centre-left Labour party - but its international analysis is second to none.
For how long...? (Score:4, Insightful)
For how long will real newspapers exist if the readers want everything for free online? And when will they notice that all these interesting stories, ranging from PRISM to Syria were actually being written by paid journalists? When will the blindingly obvious implication that a world without investigative journalism is a dictatorship hit them?
And now someone like Henry Blodget is trying to say that newspapers need stuff that can't be found elsewhere to survive, which basically means to become the local gossiping outlet? He should be ashamed of himself.
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"Real" newspapers don't exist already.
So called "news" papers nowadays are 50% "editorial opinion" (i.e. made up bullshit), 25% advertising, 20% "human interest" (i.e. celebrity gossip), and 5% left over for actual content worth reading. The online versions are no better.
"Real" news is dead in North America.
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Don't know where you live, but it's a lot better over here: The Netherlands still has a few half-decent newspapers left.
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That's your conclusion, not his.
Investigative journalism is indeed unique content - the product of unique real people with the investigative skills to unearth and develop these stories. Watergate didn't hit the news via a syndicated Whitehouse press release.
You're also going to find more compelling content in media that is publis
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The problem is that the output of investigative journalism quickly crosses over to all other news outlets, which makes it (in Henry B's view) not unique enough for buying. Prism, Syria, Egypt, drone killing, you name it, it came from paid news sources, but was freely available online within a day or two, so Henry doesn't think it's necessary to pay.
I read the local papers (Score:2)
I still read the very local papers that have very specific news connected to the local area as that kind of news isn't readily available online.
But these are only published once a week and are distributed free to the area they serve.
I dont pay for newspapers or news content, most of my "general news" comes either from watching news on free-to-air TV (especially on the ad-free national government-run broadcaster, the ABC) or from reading online news sites (again I read the ABC news website a lot)
Local newspapers will survive in an online age (Score:1)
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I hope they survive.... (Score:2)
What will I pay for? (Score:1)
1. I will pay for quality, in-depth reporting that is factual and truthful. The truthful qualifier is especially important. If you look at the reporting of a given event you will see many, many facts used to paint wildly different pictures. If you're not painting a truthful picture, I don't want your product. Some people like to believe these are ideological differences, but they aren't. They're ideological agendas being pushed onto actual events that have nothing to do with the agenda. I'm not paying for t
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Compulsive shopper or slow reader?
Local newspapers are worth buying (Score:1)
Advantages of Paper (Score:5, Funny)
We buy a Sunday paper almost every week because it's really hard to line the bird cage using a flat screen monitor.
We get the paper in spite of of itself (Score:2)
You get what you pay for (Score:3)
I spent a lot of time reading free news online, and I have to say you get what you pay for (present company excluded, of course.)
Much online news seems like it was written by unpaid interns at media companies who are on tight deadlines. There's a reason for that.
Investigative journalism (Score:3)
If news companies want to make money they should do more than reprint the same stories that everyone else is running from the wire service.
Getting reporters to actually work and dig up stories and write about interesting angles, so that they provide unique useful stories, and then they might have something worth selling.
Want readers? Specialize. (Score:2)
Nothing annoys me more than trying to find news about something local and finding that the online local news source has covered their front page with (inter-)national news.
If your small-town newspaper has a website, remember that it is competing with CNN.com, BBC.com, nytimes.com, and everything else. Chances are you not going to do better international news than the "big boys". You are going to be carrying the same AP story as everyone else.
So where can you compete? The local news that CNN, et al, are not
The only news publication worth buying in print (Score:1)
is The Economist.
I still read paper papers (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm as hardcore geek as they come and I still prefer to read the weekend paper as paper because:
1) I like to read it with my saturday breakfast. A laptop, tablet or phone just is a pain for this and I'd smudge it up with my greasy paws anyway.
2) The natural flow and visual arrangement of a newspaper just works better in an absolutely defined space than it does in the maleability of an HTML document.
3) Computers distract you with a million things and constantly shine bright lights in your eyes. Paper is much better for reading any works of even moderate length because it does one thing and is gentle on the eyes.
Papers will still be around for a long time, mainly because of point #3. Certainly not in the numbers they once were, but technology natrually has a way of forcing once-ubiqutous things into niches. Think of cars vs. horses, movies vs. live theatre and now computers vs. paper.
Convenience (Score:1)
I read the news on paper for the same reason I read books on paper: It's more convenient reading on paper than reading on the screen.
I'd buy newspapers if... (Score:2)
No, not really (Score:1)
There's not any news these days that I'd pay for. Fact is, 90% of what constitutes news, I don't care about. The other 10% doesn't get covered consistently by any source I'm familiar with that would make me feel justified in paying for it.