I finally eliminated physical newspapers from my home. It was an unceremonial and anti-climactic gesture, really. I haven’t read my LA Times for months– I just took it to the office kitchen and let the scavengers pick it apart. Instead, I now get The New York Times, CNN Political Tracker and Entertainment Weekly via email (also The Smoking Gun, ever the mind-boggler). It’s not that I’ve seen An Inconvenient Truth 20 times, seen the light and joined the Green Party (not as long as that Corvair-killing Nader is one of them…run him down with my smoke-belching Hummer, I will). It’s just a behavior thing. In addition to saving trees, the computer allows me to trippingly bypass the mindless filler that struggling dailies vainly believe will deliver the grail of the 18-to-35 demographic. Part of me feels bad for contributing to the demise of the newspaper, but it just doesn’t fit in my routine anymore. I enjoy the rapid click-n’-scan of the online gazettes. And if I want to dig deeply into a current event, I’ll switch the TV to CNN, C-SPAN or Fox News– something that frees me from constraints and lets me move about the house as the talking heads drone on.
Still, there’s a renaissance spirit about the newspaper that goes with, say, an easy chair, a crackling fire and a basset named Gulliver. Or, a leisurely breakfast in your favorite booth of your favorite diner, the ambrosial smell of pancakes and joe, and sneaking bacon to your basset named Gulliver. It’s a man thing, the newspaper. It’s what men do. Like talking tools and peeing in the woods. I’ll bet even members of the Green Party pee in the woods, the four-flushers.
There is media I won’t read online. Books, of course (whoever thought books on PDF files was a great idea was seriously lost), particularly the scriptures. Do people actually read the scriptures on a Web site for inspiration? I know LDS.org includes them, but I see that more for referencing. Same goes for the GA talks. Although… there’s nothing like putting together a lesson from online sources. Copy n’ paste, print– love it. We also subscribe to a few magazines because, well, it’s difficult to balance a laptop in the bathroom.
On a completely different note, if you happened to watch American Idol this evening and saw the last girl who auditioned– a very pretty blonde, nanny to twin girls– you might have wondered if she was LDS. When interviewed, she told Simon, Randy & Paula she and her husband have never seen an R-rated movie, and never smoked or drank. She passed the audition (she was good), so I guess we’ll be seeing more of her. Coincidentally, a member couple in our ward sent out an email blast to everyone today telling us to watch for this woman, that she’s a friend of theirs, so I think the Mormon moniker is a safe bet. I’m a little surprised the couple would use the online ward directory to send such an email, though.
But, see? That’s another great thing about the Internet.
Delete.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Nebraska // Jan 17, 2008 at 6:09 am
You brought back some memories about the newspaper industry with this post. In 2002 I was part of a team that was developing a suit of software applications for the U.S. newspapers. We had outstanding connections and our sales guys were meeting with the top people in the industry. Unfortunately, nobody was buying.
It all became clear after we had a long meeting with the Owner/President of one of the largest newspaper chains in the country. This owner lived and breathed the newspaper business for all of his life. He said papers will be here forever because the newspaper customer is educated and wants the best professional news. He said they wanted a real paper and would never be seriously interested in online versions, saving online articles, sharing them or even holding online conversations about news articles.
How did he know this? Because he knew his subscribers and they were just like him - a 70 year old, white, well educated… billionaire.
We folded up shop within a few months of this eye opening sales meeting. Sad, we missed the dot come millions by 18 months.
Here is a tip I use for LDS.ORG…
I have my second monitor opened to a verse in the scriptures. Then, every time I click that window throughout the day, accidentally or not, I force myself to read at least one verse. Sometimes, I focus on memorizing a single verse. This works well since I work on the Internet all day and have a dozen or so programs running at once - which means I click that window often.
2 David // Jan 17, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Nebraska,
That is a sad story, and too close to home (I, too, was in a scrappy band of dot.com hopefuls that missed the mark). I see how every podunk paper in the Union now has an online presence– I’ll bet that’s smarts.
As for your tip on online scripture study, you might want to add that, before anyone tries the second monitor trick, they get a new video card and invite their techno dweeb nephew over for dinner and configuration. Seriously, I like the one-verse-at-a-time method. I’ll just have to minimize my window.
3 Kim Siever // Jan 17, 2008 at 11:10 pm
LDS.org doesn’t offer robust enough scripture marking for me to switch, but I frequently read talks online.
4 xoxoxoxo // Jan 20, 2008 at 5:32 am
Daughter was watching A.I. this week and I caught the “nanny’s” comments and thought the same thing (”bet she’s LDS”). Then caught the psycho “sparkly” girl’s audition and post audition hissy fit and remembered once again why I hate ‘reality’ television. Saaaaaaaaaaaaad.
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