Extended Thoughts: Newspapers are useless
Completely, utterly useless. Yes, maybe that’s a bit of a bold statement, but I truly believe it. I am sick and tired of supposed “intellectual” people reading the New York Times in the morning just because they feel they have to keep up their “image.” Here’s a real newsflash for you: reading a bloated, advert infested, tiny texted, ultra-wide piece of cheap paper does not make you cool. Nor does it make you smarter, or more respectable. Okay, maybe that’s taking it a little too far. Newspapers do serve their purpose, and if you want to read, you have every right to. What I’m trying to say is, in our modern internet age, it doesn’t make you less of a person if you do not read newspapers.
I cannot even count the number of times someone has told me that I should read the paper to be more knowledeable about the world around me. Yes, maybe the intentions behind the suggestion are good, but there’s always this condescending tone that accompanies it. How do I respond? “No, thanks, I’m fine.”
I am a product of the internet age.
If you are reading this post (I know so many of you are) then you, too, are most likely products of the internet age. I refuse to read newspapers not because I’m ignorant to the state of our world, no, much the opposite. I refuse to read newspapers because as a product of the internet age, there is no reason for me to do so. That mess that we call a newspaper has, in my mind, become obselete. Replaced by the streamlined convenience of technology, the internet.
An endless wealth of information, at our fingertips. Why carry around the massive Sunday edition of the Times when you can carry around a thousand times the information in a smaller, more convienient device? Whether it be your laptop, palm pilot, or sexy new iPhone, everything you need is in your hands. Now, just to clarify, when I say newspapers are useless, I’m only referring to the print editions of newspapers. News is essential, especially written news. No doubt about that, but printed news is yesterday’s news.
This article from the BBC’s Click does a nice job of summarizing the competition between print and internet news sources. The internet is already hitting publishers hard enough for them to pay attention, but the war is hardly over. In fact, newspaper circulation has actually significantly risen worldwide over the past five years, according to the World Association of Newspapers. Even so, in North America, circulation has declined and as the earlier BBC article indicated, profits for publishers are also declining. What has been the publishers’ response? Exactly what it should be: put their print content online. Not only does this increase their advertisement revenue, but it also opens their content up to a much wider audience, as well as allowing them to stay completely up-to-date with ongoing events.
With all this in mind, I ask again, “why should I read a newspaper?” They used to be the only source of information. For centuries, media was synonymous with newspapers. But with the advent of radio, television, and the internet, that monopoly collapsed. Print newspapers are no longer necessary. Perhaps it’s a little too early for them to call it quits and stop printing. In fact, it is definitely too early. They still have an audience. Most of our world’s population are not products of the internet age. But in one generation, they will be, and newspapers will no doubt meet their natural death when that happens. Until then, however, I’m going to vehemently avoid reading one. Not because I’m stubborn, not because I don’t know how to read (I swear, I know how to read), not because I’m not an “intellectual,” no, I will refuse to read newspapers because I simply do not need to. If that’s not a good enough reason, then I just don’t care what is.
Plus, as the hippies (idiots) would say, newspapers are mass-murderers. The dying out of the rainforests are all their fault. So do our planet a favor, skip the morning paper, and just read whatever you have to read on the ‘net.
-Veed.
