Topic: So, I think it's time to put the papers out to pasture

[gpw11]

So, I don't know if anyone here knows who Clifford Olsen is and that doesn't really matter; he totally killed a bunch of peeps.  He's in jail in a max. sec. facility and someone somewhere found 'his' myspace account.  He isn't supposed to have internet access. The reaction?  SCANDAL!!

"How did this serial killer get access to the internet?  Is he using it to kill?!"

"Corrections Canada drops the ball!!"

"Investigation into prison security underway!"

Yet no one seems to have addressed the issue that there's about a 99.7% chance that someone else made this profile.  The dead give away...his friends are "Son of Sam", "Manson and the Family", and some other serial killers.

You see, I'm not saying print papers should be put to death because they're irrelevant...I'm saying it because they're generally a fucking joke. For every good one with some integrity (for a newspaper) there are 15,000 that are basically staffed by kids with Down's Syndrome. Beyond that, they should be put to rest because the people who rely on them have shown time and time again that they're too stupid for the news. Case in point: Letters to the Editor in every paper.

[Quemaqua]

How do they differ at all from the idiocy of non-paper reporting?  If anything I think we see even *more* stupid shit come out of internet news outlets.

[gpw11]

Oh, don't get me wrong, I agree 100% with that statement.  I just think that print newspapers still bring forth images of the credibility they may or may not have had in the past.  At least with the internet, everyone knows that there is a 80-90% chance it's garbage.  People get real newspapers delivered to their houses and generally think that there is still some integrity held within the pages.  That's the problem as I see it.

[Quemaqua]

I hadn't really thought about it that way, but I think you're completely right.

[K-man]

A majority of the news on the Internet comes from either wire services or is adapted from print paper.

While I see print declining substantially in the next five years, it will never completely die out.  We are always going to have a need for primary sources.  But yeah, I agree with gpw that newspapers carry a reputation of credibility, much more so than any Internet news site.  That's never a wise thing to think.

Regardless, this is an interesting time for print media.

[Ghandi]

There's honestly not much that newspapers can do to compete with the internet. The market share that they lost to the internet is not likely to be gained back. They can come out with new layout designs to compete with other newspapers, but if anything they will just continue to lose ground to the internet.

As for the idiocy, I agree with everyone but if you read a newspaper everyday you get accustomed to certain journalists and trust them more than others. I am more likely to trust senior writer Joe Smith than new guy Joe Shmoe.

[Cobra951]

I don't understand the greater mistrust of online sources.  All you have to do is doublecheck everything with multiple sources, and that's much quicker to do online.  Papers and TV stations are better for local stuff, but they have websites now too.  Print media is a thing of the past.  My mother still reads the paper.  I could never be bothered.

[gpw11]

I don't understand the greater mistrust of online sources.  All you have to do is doublecheck everything with multiple sources, and that's much quicker to do online.  Papers and TV stations are better for local stuff, but they have websites now too.  Print media is a thing of the past.  My mother still reads the paper.  I could never be bothered.

Brilliant.  I couldn't really agree more.