Internet advertising is growing over 20% a year. As a result,
newspaper sales are falling. What are people going to put on
the bottom of their bird cages? How are we going to potty train
puppies? Shall we smack them on the nose with an iPod nano?
“[Newspapers] give us the bald, sordid, disgusting facts of life. They
chronicle, with degrading avidity, the sins of the second-rate, and
with the conscientiousness of the illiterate give us accurate and prosaic
details of the doings of people of absolutely no interest whatsoever.”
Quotation from Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist
“Gossip is news running ahead of itself in a red satin dress.”
Quotation by Liz Smith in her newspaper column, American Way
I guess because I live in the city and I see newspapers everywhere, I hadn’t really noticed the declining numbers of newspapers being read. I personally love print newspapers. I hardly ever read internet news and I read the daily newspaper on my way to and from work.
My firm spent $50k last month in newspaper advertisements. I guess that’s another reason why I hadn’t noticed the decline in sales.
I guess the electronic age has led to a decline in print sales and most of them are adverts. I wonder if newsprint will be a thing of the past in 10 years?
It’s kinda a good thing that papers are getting smaller. With technology these days, people are getting the news on their iPods and even sent directly to their cell phones. It saves paper and is 10X faster than going out and buying a paper. But then again, this is going to put a lot of people out of work.
Nova-san. I love reading the newspaper at breakfast. It’s even better when it’s breakfast in bed.
Ras. They can’t stop making newsprint! No no nonono.
Secret Agent. You’re right. Newspaper stories are already yesterday’s news compared to net offerings. Nobody likes yesterday’s news.
Hard to say if this is a good thing or not. I agree it saves paper but relying on electronics for all media intake is going to lead to some amazing monopolies. Not to mention a power outage leaving everyone in the dark in more ways than one hehe. Relying on electronics for everything seems a recipe for disaster to me. But everything seems to be headed that way. Who knows maybe someday in the future we will develop free energy that doesn’t break down. I am surprised we still haven’t come up with an alternative paper. There are tons of materials we could use. But you could say the same about oil. But enough about natural resources. Great job Seraphine. Loved it. Wack the puppies with your ipods lol. You can always get a robo puppy then you won’t need toilet training
News? I’m going to bed, because there is nothing even half way sensible I could say about it today.
But I like the paper part – my next barbecue is around the corner…. and I don’t care if the fire is lit by advertisements.
Reading the “New Yorker” in bed with a cup of cappuccino at hand could be interesting. I shall try that next time I have a chance.
I’ve actually just recently written a paper at university about the challenges traditional news media are currently facing. There’s a lot to say about it, but to sum it up, I don’t think that paper versions of newspapers will be dying out anytime soon- but they need to focus on their strengths and advantages in order to remain competitive with their online brother and sisters. Change is always threatening but it doesn’t need to be all bad if we focus on the positive.
Lots of love from Laos… hope you’re well! B xxx
So ture! Great one!
And I love the quotation from Oscar Wilde!
i would like to have some great advartising in my blog
hehehe
a kiss and a hug,
thanks a lot for all!
see you,
Kira
This is too bad cause I’m addicted to newspapers… and I don’t like reading them online. Since the Metro and 24 Hours, I found a lot of “real” newspapers are thinner as well. And more ads. Hate it.
Hi Sera ~Circulation for printed newspapers (without adding in Internet figures) are still holding up much better here in Australia than in most other urbanized countries in the world and we have not experienced declines in circulation. Blogging links to newspapers has increased markedly as you would expect together with on line growth in the internet based services. Fortunately we still have some decent independent daily broadsheets which are not shrinking and are able to express opinions freely, although the afternoon papers are generally rags. I find our local free newspaper a good source for local information and its circulation is growing. Do you read your own local rag?
I used to have the NY times emailed to me each morning but I found it a tad too dry and it appeared to me to be exhibit a tone of editorial caution taken to an extreme. Best wishes.
Distributed ownership allows for a broader ‘take’ on current events. The newspapers are steadily losing readers because people understand they might just as well watch cnn for ten minutes as buy a paper. When a couple of conglomerates own it all the only sensible recourse is the internet.
It’s so true, I use to read the paper all the time and now I don’t cause I catch up with everything online. Sad…
I’ve never been a big newspaper fan anyway, the paper makes me sneeze (allergy), however, I’ve been reading quite a lot these days, at the train and so on, it helps me learning danish. “except the obituary pages”, and what we’re gonna do without newspapers? (the pet thing), such sarcastic observations hehe
Very good comic!
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