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Cardin's Newspaper Revitalization Act would allow newspapers to operate as nonprofits for educational purposes under the U.S. tax code, giving them a similar status to public broadcasting companies.Jason?
Under this arrangement, newspapers would still be free to report on all issues, including political campaigns. But they would be prohibited from making political endorsements.
Comments
It may just be that because they have long been for-profit (and profitable) the current owners may rather see their business die then become a non-profit.
Papers are still relevant, though, in more rural areas. In those areas, they are often the only source of local news.
In an urban area, there is no need for a printed newspaper. I'm not saying that they are a bad thing. On the contrary, I believe that they are a good thing. I can't, however, ignore the fact that they are redundant at best.
If a person will be 70 years old in 2010 they were 40 in 1980.
If a person will be 60 years old in 2010 they were 30 in 1980.
When you say "old people" what age range are you talking about?
I bring this up in part because I recently read an article where people were bitching about a 65 year old woman who was still paying a leasing fee on her rotary dial phone. The writer was accusing the phone company of preying on old people but the article did not point out that the woman was in her 30's when the Bell System was broken up. She may be "old" now but she was not old when the telephone system was broken up and she could have bought her own phone.
There are plenty of senior citizens, who are very old, but are not old people. Go on YouTube and you can find plenty of awesome people who were born a long time ago, yet have adapted very well, and would not be bothered by the loss of a newspaper. You will also find plenty of people who are relatively young, perhaps even in their '30s or '40s who are luddites or otherwise refuse to move beyond the way the world was when they were children. Nostalgia and resistance to change keep them stuck in the '70s or '80s or what have you. There is clearly no shortage of people stuck in the '60s.
Regardless, the overwhelming majority of old people are old, and the overwhelming majority of young people are young, which is why we feel ok using the term "old people," even when we don't mean it in its literal sense.
This is however an outsider's perspective of the US and the events that took place.
I personally used to read U.K tabloid papers, but there's not any real news in them anymore, just a lot of scaremongering. Only ones that do have anything interesting, I can easily find the same news online. I do think its important for newspapers to have an online version, besides the paper cut. I see some are going for the register style model, and while that might suit them, it kind of defeats the object of news being an open accessible source of info, from anywhere, anytime.
But yeah, a few will survive and perhaps go non-profit, with one of two actually making profit. Guess they'll have to use the recycled paper for something else.
BBC World News Service which still goes out on radio, like it always has. NPR is also pretty good for stuff many might not report on.
Probably not. Necessity is the mother of invention, so newspapers need to get with the times, get creative or go under.
I get an e-Metro newspaper delivered to my inbox, free, everyday. Its nice and we need to see more stuff like this.
Also I recommend checking out this TED talk about design possibly being a way to save newspapers.
Over here, we have some newspapers, giving away free music cd and dvds. Since both the music and newspaper industries are in trouble, it seemed to benefit them both well. This on happens with sunday newspapers, where a weekly magazine will be included, making it a package deal. This worked out well for one U.K band, who got new fans from such exposure.
After watching that video, I see what you mean. If newspapers look like that here, I might buy one too. Interesting stuff.
I know that the vast majority of newspaper comics suck. But I also know that when I go to my parents house, the only section of the paper I look at is the comics. A paper with just comics I think would sell big, and would push down the circulations of other papers, as there are at least some people out there who are just buying them for the comics.
Having a lot of artsy friends who want to go into design, I know it's a crappy business with no real demand. Imagine if every paper had an artist working on its aesthetics. More importantly, imagine if there were a local paper, the kind of thing reporting on town hall meetings and school pageants, that had a weekly cover on that caliber, always featuring someone familiar to you on the cover! With today's design tools, I think it's possible, and I think it would be an amazing way to build a community.
I can't put my finger on what in that video changed my opinion, but suddenly I'm a lot more optimistic about the fate of papers.
Local news will always find some sort of a niche market. Maybe papers will fulfill that task; maybe it's the era of professional local news blogging, if start-up newschasers can make an online model work. I know a guy in these here parts who chases the police scanner and gets tens of thousands of hits a week on his blag writing about car crashes, stabbings, and apartment fires.
Sadly, the thing propping up most small-town-middling-city newspapers right now is local high school sports coverage. That tells you something about the average intellect of consumers. It might not be why enlightened folk like you or myself buy a paper, but we're awesome. Fluffy-feel-good-local-color-bullshit sells well, too, because old people who read papers want to feel safe. They want to feel that the world is essentially a good place. And mid-page sections about the woman who's dyed poodles for 30 years and is now working for poodle-saving charities is -- again, to my great chagrin -- a big pull.