Culture Vulture

 
Back when I lived in New York City, one of my favorite pleasures was getting the Sunday New York Times on Saturday night.
Back in that now-quaint pre-digital era, it seemed so neat, on the back end of a night of socializing or movie-going about Manhattan, to pick up a copy of tomorrow's paper that night before boarding the subway for a ride back to one of the "outer boroughs" as they were called - Brooklyn in my case. Whatever you didn't finish reading late Saturday night or early - as in very early- Sunday morning, would be waiting for you later that day. No need to get dressed to head out to the newsstand to get the day properly launched before you had the requisite amount of coffee.
Now I realize that poring over the Sunday Times isn't everybody's idea of a capstone of a thrilling Saturday night on the town, but it worked for me, most of time.
So awhile back I informed the Journal's readers that I was finally going to take the big plunge and experiment with modern day equivalent - online newspaper reading - to see if it cured me of a 40-year-old addiction to print journalism. Things took longer than I thought - the Internet connection on my home computer flaked out - and I got knocked off course for a few weeks, but now, about a month later, I've tested the waters sufficiently and have come to some conclusions about it all, just in time, it seems, to join in a growing chorus of writers and journalists who have made a not-so-small cottage industry out of analyzing what's to become of old-style newspapers you hold in your hand  in the era of electronic web-based ones.
Not that concerns about the future of the printed paper are anything new. For the past couple of years at least, those in the industry have been aware of two disturbing trends - circulation was falling, and advertising revenue was sinking along with it.
It wasn't hard to figure out what was going on. Readers were migrating to the Web-based versions of newspapers, where the content (most of it, anyway) was being offered for free, instead of the 50-75 cents the traditional newspaper sold for. Blogs and other entirely new sources of news were emerging to challenge the newspaper's role as the gatekeeper of information. Advertisers, convinced that this was were the eyeballs were headed, and where the advertising costs were less, responded accordingly, and have cut back on advertising in the newspaper.
In this week's issue of Time Magazine, Walter Isaacson, a very distinguished writer, historian and former managing editor of Time addressed the issue of long term survivability for newspapers when they are in effect competing against themselves - expecting their readers to fork over $5 to $7 ($14 in the case of the Times, if you buy it daily)  a week for a paper they can read for free on the Internet. Even Isaacson admitted he doesn't buy the New York Times anymore. Makes me feel like a bit of a dope for still doing so. 
Here's the big newsflash for all you readers in this piece - sooner or later, you are going to be asked to pay for this content that we in the newspaper business have been happy to give you for free. We've taught you that, by golly, it should be free. It's not of course. It costs money to have reporters go out and cover stories, and to have photographers shoot pictures and even have editors like me edit them. We prefer not to eat grass anymore than you do. But we've treated the online versions of our newspapers like a financial throwaway, while falling over ourselves to figure out better ways to keep you from buying a newspaper.
Even blogs or other online news sources, sooner or later, need a person to go out there and ferret out the news, just like the good old days.
There's all kinds of creative things going on in the newspaper world to stave off the death of a document you can read while holding it in your hands, but all of these technological marvels are still a few years off. So what did I find I liked about the online papers?
I stuck mostly to my favorites - The New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Washington Post. I also read the Rutland Herald and Burlington Free Press. The Web sites of the Bennington Banner and the Manchester Journal I was already very familiar with. I already look at them everyday.
So here's what I loved - you got the news when it was happening. Stories were being uploaded to the Web continuously, and I'd often have a sense of deja vu when I'd read the headline of a story  the next morning that I read the night before. And there is all this extra content - blogs, opinion stuff, opportunities for reader interaction, video and audio interviews. It was like Dorothy being swept out of black-and-white Kansas and waking up in technicolor Oz.  
Hands down, the Times's Web site is the best. I didn't bother with the Wall Street Journal, although I bet theirs is pretty good too. That's because the Journal charges you money - $103 a year or $1.99 per week to subscribe - a total bargain compared to the printed version. If you worked in financial services or in some heavy duty business environment, it would be indispensable. For my purposes right now, I'll stick with reading the print version a couple of times a week. The Journal (the other Journal, that is, the one published on Wall Street) has some great editorial and opinion pieces that come at things from a conservative slant, rare in mainstream media today, so I like the diversity with the Times's liberal bent. And anyway, the Wall Street Journal, like every other newspaper it seems, is losing money, so they need the $4 or so I spend on them each week. Rupert Murdoch may be a strange guy, but even he's worth $4.
So I loved all this cool content the big boys were able to get on their sites. The Free Press and the Herald - well, they weren't bad, but it was pretty much an electronic regurgitation of the print paper, with the occasional spot of breaking news. All well and good, but not enough to make me want to throw their newspapers under the bus, because despite all that cool content, one thing was still missing.
You've already guessed it, if, like me, you're of "a certain age." I spend a significant chunk of my day staring at a computer screen, and reading a paper online just isn't the same relaxing experience as flipping through a newspaper on my couch or easy chair with a cup of coffee close at hand.  Plus, with reading a paper, I tend to read more of the story. Online, I read headlines, and if a story interests me, I'll click on the link and read it. It makes getting through the paper a lot faster an experience, but less complete. It's like I'm searching for the things I already know about. When I flip through paper, I might read a story about some off-the-beaten track place or situation that I never would have read online. It takes longer but I get more out of it.
It doesn't feel like work, either. It's a break in the action that feeds the mind and the soul.
And here's a tip for all you advertisers out there - I really, really don't look at the ads online that much either. Print advertising - it works. That's why you are being asked to pay more for it.
So I'm not ready to give up the old-fashioned newspaper just yet. But there's no doubt where the future is coming from. I realize I'm way behind the curve here, even as I've tried to make upgrading the Manchester Journal's Web site a priority. Here, we've been trying to load more stories faster, particularly during that yawning gap of time between issues. A week is a long time in this business. Time is our currency. A story that is cutting edge on Friday is old news by the following Tuesday. So we've been trying, and will go on trying, to push stories onto our Web site as soon as possible, along with the photo journals, the poll questions and the blog. Video and audio are beckoning. I continually find myself thinking about all the possibilities the technology presents.
I did all my online exploring without the obvious tool that makes news reading off of the Web a lot easier, I would think, anyway - the venerable laptop computer. It sure looks like fun to be surfing the Web wirelessly from some coffeeshop, anyway. I'm still desktop bound. Maybe that's the sequel to this.
I'm sure the guy who sold me the Sunday Times on Saturday night 30 years ago in New York never contemplated a virtual, electronic newsstand would put him out of business. They were hard to psyche out anyway, as they wordlessly made change and shoved the bulky paper with all those sections I never read (Travel? Where was I going to go? Real Estate? I could barely keep up with my monthly rent ). That's the other nice thing about the electronic paper - no pile of newsprint to recycle. But when they do finally go under, it will be sad - one more piece of life as we knew it that seemed eternal will be no more. Hopefully a way will have been found to replicate the sense of relaxation on the easy chair. We're not there yet.