After all the talk about the struggles of dead-tree newspapers to survive in this economic climate, even after seeing the Rocky Mountain News and Seattle P-I close down (or go online only with a tiny staff in the P-I's case), it still did feel quite real that major papers could just up and vanish. It was a new version of NIMBY but instead of "not in my backyard" it was was CHIMBY..."couldn't happen in my backyard." That feeling lasted only until this morning when the NY Times and the Boston Globe both reported that without significant concessions in the next 30 days, the Time Company would have to give serious thought to shutting down the venerable Globe. That was a bit of a shock.
However, even as I sit here fretting, I know that I'm part of the problem. We haven't received a daily paper for years. We canceled our Providence Journal subscription some time ago because so much of its content was recycled from the Times and other national papers. There are a few glossy magazines we still get -- Newsweek (but do we still need to?), the New Yorker (that one's hanging around), and my guilty pleasure, Entertainment Weekly (really, just for the movie news...). We still get the New York Times' Sunday edition but I suppose that might eventually go away, too. Of course, so much of the enjoyment of that paper is the tactile sense of thumbing through it on a Sunday morning, flipping to the Week in Review first and then moving to the front section, arts, sports, business, the magazine. It's a Sunday tradition of sorts but it might not last.
Instead I read the Times online, I visit Slate, Politico, the Boston Globe and Boston Herald sports sections for Red Sox news, RealClear Politics and RealClear Sports, Huffington Post, and more. My home page opens to Excite.com and the AP and NY Times newsfeeds. I enjoy my favorite comics online now and in color. I get my weekly podcasts of political news from NPR, the Times, the New Yorker, and Slate. The dead-tree news outlets are struggling in part because of me and people like me, who are turning to other faster, more dynamic mediums and not putting our eyeballs on the printed version and the ads that pay their bills. It's no wonder that even the Globe and the Times itself are struggling. If the Globe actually were to shut down, it would be a damn shame. And I'd read all about it on my computer screen.
Showing posts with label newspapers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label newspapers. Show all posts
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Monday, December 29, 2008
Are you literate?
The 2008 America's Most Literate Cities rankings have been released. Seattle and Minneapolis tie for first with St. Paul ranked fourth (having lived in the Twin Cities for 5 years, I have no trouble believing those rankings) while Rhode Island's cities aren't anywhere to be found. Actually, we don't qualify anyway -- the survey is limited to cities with populations in excess of 250,000 while Providence tops out at only 172,000. Hell, the entire state barely crosses the 1 million mark.
The study, by Central Connecticut State University President Dr. John W. Miller, ranks the top 50 cities in the nation based on:
Nevertheless, I can see where we might fall down here in Little Rhody. Newspaper circulation sucks because our local paper has sadly become smaller and less capable, now little more than a collection of articles from other papers and wire services and not even complete articles at that (NY Times articles picked up by the Providence Journal are routinely chopped off to save column inches and I'm pretty sure that words are removed from the middle of some sentences). We canceled our ProJo subscription because we could get better, more complete, and more timely news from other news sources on the Internet or through our subscription to the Sunday New York Times.
We also don't have any major publishing houses here in Rhode Island though there are some outstanding small press publishers like Burning Deck Press in Providence while along the shore, Newport and Middletown are understandably home to a number of major international sailing and boating publications. Bookstores are also tough. Barnes & Noble and Borders have made their presence known to the detriment of some longtime local booksellers (RIP College Hill Bookstore) though thankfully some, like the outstanding and wonderful Island Books in Middletown have survived the big box bookstore onslaught and hopefully will continue to do so for a long time to come.
On the educational side of things, we're in pretty good shape. We're slightly below the national average for high school graduates (82.7% vs 84%) but make up the difference with a 2.4% bump in Bachelor's degrees or higher (29.4% vs 27%). Of course, Minnesota kicks our butt all over the place in these areas but at least we've still got bragging rights over Mississippi.
So, all things considered, we might have a shot if the qualifications were ever altered to allow us to compete. In the meantime, we're going to do all we can here at my house to get in shape for that competition. Bananagrams anyone?
The study, by Central Connecticut State University President Dr. John W. Miller, ranks the top 50 cities in the nation based on:
- newspaper circulation
- number of bookstores
- library resources
- periodical publishing resources
- educational attainment, and
- Internet resources
Nevertheless, I can see where we might fall down here in Little Rhody. Newspaper circulation sucks because our local paper has sadly become smaller and less capable, now little more than a collection of articles from other papers and wire services and not even complete articles at that (NY Times articles picked up by the Providence Journal are routinely chopped off to save column inches and I'm pretty sure that words are removed from the middle of some sentences). We canceled our ProJo subscription because we could get better, more complete, and more timely news from other news sources on the Internet or through our subscription to the Sunday New York Times.
We also don't have any major publishing houses here in Rhode Island though there are some outstanding small press publishers like Burning Deck Press in Providence while along the shore, Newport and Middletown are understandably home to a number of major international sailing and boating publications. Bookstores are also tough. Barnes & Noble and Borders have made their presence known to the detriment of some longtime local booksellers (RIP College Hill Bookstore) though thankfully some, like the outstanding and wonderful Island Books in Middletown have survived the big box bookstore onslaught and hopefully will continue to do so for a long time to come.
On the educational side of things, we're in pretty good shape. We're slightly below the national average for high school graduates (82.7% vs 84%) but make up the difference with a 2.4% bump in Bachelor's degrees or higher (29.4% vs 27%). Of course, Minnesota kicks our butt all over the place in these areas but at least we've still got bragging rights over Mississippi.
So, all things considered, we might have a shot if the qualifications were ever altered to allow us to compete. In the meantime, we're going to do all we can here at my house to get in shape for that competition. Bananagrams anyone?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)