All the news that's fit to print - and some that's not.

I don't know about you but I love newspapers. I am a news junkie. I regularly check-in on-line at the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Guardian. I religiously buy the local "lefty" paper in whatever city I'm living in on Sundays. Now it's the Observer in London, but before it was the Mail and Guardian from Joberg and before that the New York Times in Atlanta and Baltimore.

I feel the pain of newspapers that are going under because sources of revenue from advertising are increasingly limited. I worry that with the decline of print news, so goes the decline in the number and quality of journalists that cover such news. I appreciate the content that I get on newspaper websites is for the most part free and that maybe it won't - or can't - always stay that way. The current and future state of journalism and possible reductions in public access to unbiased, non-commercial news is starting to concern me.

With these thoughts in mind, I wondered when I read the NYTimes today on-line whether this article (on how sports stars get their luxury cars from the city they play in to the city they live in) is a symptom or a cause of said declines. I'm being a little snarky in that there's likely always been these "general interest" features since newspapers began -  but they seem to be sneaking in more and more as "news". One set of quotes around the word news is almost starting to feel inadequate.

The newspaper is dead. Long live the "news"paper?, I'm afraid.

Comments

[Jess]

I used to be a newspaper junkie...until I did day shifts at them. Now I listen to Radio 4. They sound much happier there.