Daily Archives: July 21, 2010

1 Comment

So newspapers are dying. The decline is even more noticeable in the US.

mint death of the news

Budget help from Mint.com

It is interesting to listen to many of my colleagues who still enjoy reading the daily paper over breakfast, or make a point of leisurely perusing the newspaper with a cup of coffee on their first day of their vacation. My parents-in-law have the newspaper delivered daily and I'll browse them on a Friday night but the daily newspaper is not an embedded part of my life like some of my peers. It's probably because I never grew up in a newspaper focussed household. We'd get the Sunday Mail but the only other periodicals around the Wegner farm house were the Stock Journal (dubbed the "Farmer's Bible" by my Dad, an almost blasphemous statement in his world) and The Lutheran. A very ironic combination. My mother used to brag that she had never read a book from start to finish in her life and my Dad's favourite book was titled "Farming Is Fun."

So, pre-internet, newspapers and their direct relative, the news broadcast (TV or radio, take your pick) were the way we got information about the important events happening in our country and world. The media corporations controlled what was newsworthy and ignored what was deemed unimportant. In a one paper town like Adelaide, that was publishing for a relatively captive audience.

Now we have the web. Initially, newspapers just reproduced themselves in an online form, still curating news that they felt their readers needed. But with RSS and social media, we can access news from any source and we now longer rely on one corporation to bring the news to us. But is that broadening our horizons or allowing us to insulate ourselves with our own self imposed limitations?