Now, if I want news there are lots of places I can get it On Demand. I don’t have to have a stack of messy newspapers on my kitchen table. Plus, if I just want news from my area, or news reports about a specific story, or a specific subject, I can get it. So why, oh, why would I pay for something that’s of less use to me than that??

I think bloggers also make no bones about their leanings which, strangely, makes them more easy to trust. They are out there with their biases while many feel that newspaper reporters have just as many biases but they creep into the reports more subtly.

Blogs shouldn’t be his main concern, many of them have almost no readership, he should be worried about news sources already available on the web, and Google News, and those are not exactly “unsourced ranting”.

This is a paper that’s had an online counterpart to the print edition for several years. They recently made a fee-based .pdf version available online, as well. They have a bright and experienced publisher — a sharp and thoughtful editor — for the online edition. In many ways, they’re more aggressive and freewheeling than the print crew.

The consultants concluded the online edition already had a larger readership than the sum of their competitors, hard copy and online — in their target market. They concluded the revenue stream from the online edition — over the next ten-year interval — would become greater than that of the print edition.

Should be pretty interesting.

The Times recently shifted formats from a traditional broadsheet to a tabloid and sales rose a bit. I think this is due to the fact it’s easier to read a tabloid paper than a broadsheet, especially on the train. It used to be that the tabloid format meant “rubbish” news (The Sun, The Mail, etc.), but now a couple of the “quality” dailies (Independent, Times) are tabloid-format that association of format with reader intelligence (i.e., tabloid=uneducated reader) is breaking down.

So, maybe format is an issue as well with Ameri-papers. The broadsheet format is simply more difficult to read, especially in public.

He should do that for real…he should just let loose and use his column as his personal blog with headline stunners like “Ok..Let me tell you what reallyhappened last night at the bar…and”An open letter to my boss….Dear Putz…” The possibilities are endless….

No.

I just get it from other sources that aren’t going to physically clutter the place up until I get to it.

You’re absolutely right. It’s the packaging more than anything else. Why should I pay for a daily or even Sunday Edition of The Arizona Republic, when I can just go to http://www.azcentral.com and get the meat of the news online. They even have RSS feeds available diced up a couple of different ways. That essentially relegates the printed copy to a shopper.

Mr. Markoff has it totally wrong. You see, if I want additional information on some news article, there’s a pretty decent chance that I can find some blog somewhere that talks about what I’m looking for. How is that not reporting? Just because it’s not formalized doesn’t mean that it’s not reporting.