The death of newspapers? Maybe the paper-versions...

People moan and groan about the death of newspapers all the time these days. Oh the kvetching! There's even an entire website devoted to the Newspaper Death Watch. All the media houses I like and appreciate, as well as some I don't, talk about it.

It's to the point where honestly some day soon I expect to go out the door to get the newspaper [1] and find that they just stopped printing it last night.

But then...how is it that about 30% of the windows open in my browser right now (which is 30% of a considerable number...I have an addiction to opening windows to "read later" - soon. ish.) are links to not just any news site, but one particular one? Interestingly enough, the local paper (which we receive each day and read) is NOT the site that I have open, but rather the New York Times.

From articles about Facebook hackers to random sh!t from the Freakonomics guys' blog about parents being addicted to parenting (snort, snicker) to cerebral stuff like this about your brain on metaphors, I'm addicted to reading news articles! From actual news sources! And even aside from the New York Times, I read articles on NPR.org, The Huffington Post, and all sorts of other places. The least-read sites for me are my local sites, but of course when I want information on a local event I need those sites to work, to have the information I want exactly when I want it.

But honestly, what is all the malarkey about the death of newspapers? If they want to narrowly define their business as print, perhaps (and that might explain why I don't have a bunch of links to my local Chicago Tribune open right now, they aren't as prevalent on the web it seems to me) but if they can conceive of themselves the way we consumers have *always* conceived of them - as purveyors of information and opinions - there's more of a role for them now in this big confusing morass we call the Internet than ever before. We need these information curators, the collectors, the sifters, the people who help us find the good stuff among the ten thousand offers to "lose belly fat with this one simple but wacky tip!" - now more than ever!

 

[1] Okay, this is a lie. My husband brings in the paper almost every day. When he's travelling, it causes me no end of consternation to have to get the paper myself - brr!