How often do you buy a newspaper?

For the purposes of this thread, Never.

Er, what if you subscribe to a newspaper?

Then you buy it every day innit.

I THINK YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR IT

I guess so, but it seems weird saying I "buy" it... Don't people subscribe to newspapers in the UK or the USA?

(x-post)

Not many

WHAT IF I GET A FREE NEWSPAPER PUSHED THRU ME LETTERBOX EVERY WEEK AGAINST MY WILL?

Oh, why are there always those paperboys in American films and comics then?

x-post

In the US yes, in the UK no, although one might order one for delivery by paper boy everyday it's not really a subscription.

So this poll is really for Britons only?

The difference being, in the US you ring up the newspaper to subscribe, in the UK, you do it through your local newsagent.

Seems an old fashioned thing to me. Still get paper boys I suppose.

http://www.fotosearch.com/comp/DGV/DGV051/775041.jpg

Not everyone subscribes. I would say most people buy at the news stand as required, in most countries.

My mum gets her Sunday newspapers from a van that comes round the estate

But it so much more handy when you subscribe... You can read the paper while you're having breakfast and don't have to walk out of your flat to get it.

(xx-post)

Who wants to read a newspaper every day tho! That's the point of the poll surely!

I though it was fairly common to read a newspaper every day. In here almost everyone does that.

you'd think you would know more about the world if you read the newspaper everyday

In where? BUY a newspaper then. (xp)

I read newpaper websites over breakfast. I'd get the weekend papers delivered if I was at home more than one weekend in three.

I don't need to buy it, I subscribe to it.

So you get it for nothing then?

No, but it's not generally called "buying". Do you "buy" your cable TV or Internet connection?

which box do i tick if my mum buys it and i read it?

I don't have a cable or internet connection. But, yes, you're buying it. (xp)

oh that's in the instructions! ignore that

Subscribe to the Waterloo Courier, occasionally buy a Des Moines Register ("yesterday's news tomorrow!"), a Trib, an Onion, the NYT or, if jonesing for boxscores & pie-charts, a USA Today. I've even cobbed a neighbor's WSJ -- they invariably pile up unread all over the yard and porch.

Any old newshounds still subscribe to more than one?

Yeah, but most people wouldn't say you "buy" your Internet connection every day.

(xxx-post)

Doesn't matter whether they say it or not, they're still buying it!

Tuomas your obstinate pedantry is breaking new ground. Can you not just accept that something subscribed to is bought and save us 100 junk posts?

I'm just wondering how often internet-savvy people actually buy (or subscribe to, or pay for in some way) a newspaper. I'm guessing not too much, which is bad news for the publishers, since from what I hear online editions currently make a loss.

I buy the Saturday Guardian for the review section. Apart from that, occasionally for a commute. But ten years ago I probably would have bought a paper most days.

Ditto

A few make money (guardian I think) but only if the paper edition is paying for the costs of newsgathering.

I'm guessing not too much, which is bad news for the publishers, since from what I hear online editions currently make a loss.

well if they're gonna sponsor the kids of their staff to sprout shite on their web editions about how they're shitting themselves about going to india, what do they fucking expect

<i>A few make money (guardian I think) but only if the paper edition is paying for the costs of newsgathering.</i>

Not the Guardian, if my source at the Guardian is correct.

Why has it taken so long for Max Gogarty to be mentioned?

"currently" = will do, forever. No newspaper website anywhere makes a) enough money to stand on its own, b) enough money to compensate for the loss of print.

is he the new nazi germany?

xpost

"currently" = will do, forever. No newspaper website anywhere makes a) enough money to stand on its own, b) enough money to compensate for the loss of print.

I wonder where this will leave us, though. Because surely print-edition daily newspapers will die out sometime in the next 10-20 years. Magazines may survive, freebie newspapers may survive, but I can't see paying newspapers surviving. Will newsgathering become totally centralised into some kind of Reuters style operation?

I don't know where it leaves us, but am pretty sure it spells the end for large newsrooms full of hacks. Change isn't always for the best.

(not that large newsrooms full of hacks deserve to stay around just because, but because newspapers generate the vast majority of our "news", and we'll be a poorer place without that, in all sorts of ways)

NYTimes: Sun, Mon, Wed, Fri, Sat

Newsday: Tue, Thu, occas Fri or Sun

there's an interesting article in the last issue of the new yorker about the wane of newspapers:

Out of Print: The death and life of the American newspaper

"the last issue of the new yorker" -- a chilling turn of phrase.

Pick up a free commuter newspaper Mon - Fri to read as I walk to work, then read NYTimes, Washington Post, BBC online while eating breakfast at work. Buy a NY Times 4 times a year, if there's something in it I want a hard copy of.

That New Yorker link is great. Huffington Post has a circulation of 11 million, and makes less than $1 a year from each of them, and thinks it's the way forward. wau

I'd buy a Sunday paper from a box when we were looking for open houses. Now that we've got a new house, I don't need that yellow rag anymore.

We have one daily, and it's horrible. Any story about Central High insists on including that Faubus called out the troops to "keep the peace". Every year, we get a front page story on David O. Dodd, boy martyr of the Confederacy. Executions carried out by the state gets three paragraphs on page 3B since the action is only a carrying out of a sentence. On and on and on, and I refuse to pay for it if I don't have to.

I usually buy a paper whenever I travel to a large or large-ish city, to see what the local coverage and ad support are like.

to see what the local coverage and ad support are like.

I ordinarily wouldn't post this, but it's relevant in a way.

fuck a print edition

PP, that blog post is great. I'm surprised that guy's column isn't called "Hall Monitor" or something like.

3-4 times a week for me, considering it takes me usually two days to read the paper. OTOH, it often happens I buy 2 dailies at the same time. I once subscribed to a daily but ended up spending my weekends reading all the back issues from the previous week.

Tuomas OTM

The thing is, I generally prefer the experience of reading print on paper. It's just that it's so easy to get news online while doing work and not even have anyone notice you're not working.

I love to read the newspaper in bed or in the breakfast table. Can't do that with a computer. I only read online news if I'm already at the computer for some other reason, or if I want to get an real time update on some ongoing news story.

tuomas do they not have laptops in finland or something

eating in front of a laptop is unpleasant and gross

You might offend the laptop

everyday

newspapers are for metro rides. Can't do that with a "computer" can you, kids?

The univ. has NYT and USA Today for free...does this count as 'buying'? *DILEMMA!* *DRUDGE SIRENS!*

I always just pick up one that someone's left on the bus. As long as it doesn't look too messy.

That should've just been one sentence.

The indie, maybe a couple of times a week.

I'm just wondering how often internet-savvy people actually buy (or subscribe to, or pay for in some way) a newspaper. I'm guessing not too much, which is bad news for the publishers, since from what I hear online editions currently make a loss.

-- Zelda Zonk, Thursday, April 3, 2008 6:18 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Link

I buy the Saturday Guardian for the review section. Apart from that, occasionally for a commute. But ten years ago I probably would have bought a paper most days.

-- Zelda Zonk, Thursday, April 3, 2008 6:20 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Link

I have subscriptions to The Wall Street Journal, New York Observer and about 10 other print publications.

I "bought" them with frequent flyer miles, if that counts.

I used to read the WSJ every day on the subway, but hardly ever open it since moving to a car culture.

idea of people eating at their computers is pretty sad. i can't even remember the last time i paid for a newspaper. wonder what the market would be like if they hadn't gone online basically for free. "the internet" has not created an alternative news-gathering labour force; would it have done?

(lol though if you believe that nick davies guy the UK press is having a hard time sustaining a news-gathering force and largely relies on agencies. whereas the internet has certainly created an alternative opinions-having force.)

apparently the independent's website breaks even -- unlike the paper issue.

So websites need funding from their parent papers, but nobody reads papers 'cuz they get news on the web?

Yikes.

I think it matters on the city.

The publication I work for is the opposite.

We offer daily news on our website and publish a magazine each month. In our case, the website is the horse and the print edition is the cart.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Ouroboros.png/250px-Ouroboros.png

tbh i think the guardian's (especially) policy of turning themselves into a big blog is suicidal because it devalues the currency of 'published writing'. why pay for or 'respect the authority of' a brand like the grau if they post barely-through-through bullshit cribbed from actual blogs? better to distinguish yrself from the rest.

Print media will always be relevant. It's the same old story as digitizing music. Some people never learn.

I read the Metro on the bus in to work and I look at the Guardian website (I don't know why, the terrible quality of the journalism annoys me more and more recently, the other day there was a great big puff piece for the current Argentinian president which completely ignored the fact that she's presiding over agricultural strikes and food shortages) and the website of the Spanish football newspaper Marca most days. If I have some waiting around in town to do between work and meeting someone or going to a football match or whatever I buy the Guardian or El País and read it in the pub with a pint and a Jamesons.

Occasionally I'll pick up a Jersey paper to read with lunch but they're usually disappointing. The Star-Ledger is probably the best of them. Even The Record, one of the better ones, is usually a decent cover with nothing inside.

I feel a bit like this is one of those runaway market trains where we can see the danger ahead but don't know how to stop. Maybe something new will eventually emerge in place of the print media, but I don't think the blogosphere as it stands is anywhere near that level.

the Star-Ledger is definitely the best NJ paper

never
http://www.fsaa.com/web%20directory%20clip%20art.JPG

sometimes I read the NYT online while the print version is still sitting outside my door. I like knowing it's there, tho.

apparently the independent's website breaks even
Nah, it doesn't either.

felicity: this is totally different from digital music, because music pays for itself, but classified ads (and some display) pay for print news. All classified ads going rapidly online = nothing left to pay for news.

print will still have a market willing to buy it when it's already too late.

Read the Guardian cover-to-cover every day throughout the eighties. Nowadays, a cursory visit the website every day, but just buy the hardcopy on Saturdays.

banriquit otm also

because music pays for itself

How?

Well, there's a problem with it in the digital age, but the idea generally has been that you want a bit of music, you pay for it, and that money goes towards paying the people who make that music.

With newspapers, the cover price barely pays for the printing. The news operation is paid for by classified advertising.

It's like if CDs were to be paid for by adverts put in the liner notes, and given away free. Then suddenly all the ads are pulled.

jesus did i type digital age I spend too much time in synergistic flexibility meetings

print newspapers all suck-- insane christians or jewled 'liberals'. th times occassionally happens to cover whatsup or has got a decent subtext to an op ed bt most of th time it seems like a joke orchestrated by some sinister overlord, inane story after inane story. there should be like a retrospective newspaper that talks real history without basing their entirety on the notion that the only genocide was on Hitler.

Relevant, not self-sustaining. Not all music is profitable and not all music is available digitally.

Music is partially recouped through licensing, some of for advertising unrelated products. And there are plugs in liner notes and packaging.

I don't know that 100% of newspapers are funded by physical ads anymore. A lot of news sites are moving towards monetizing digital access.

As with music, there will always be independent press, and those people are doing it for reasons other than profit.

xpost old Usenet meme

"As with music, there will always be independent press, and those people are doing it for reasons other than profit."

uh?

uh huh

I realise all that about music, but I'm talking about in general terms -- the vast bulk of income that has been generated historically by CD sales has come from the sale itself. That's never been true of newspapers, ever.

Because of that, they can be as relevant as they like but without ppl to pay for them they'll cease to exist in any recognizable form -- industry consensus is no print by 2020. I hear this "monetize digital" line all the time, but nobody's worked out how to do it yet, and not on anything like the scale required.

the vast bulk of income that has been generated historically by CD sales has come from the sale itself

Actually, most of the music money is in publishing. Nobody ever made jack on records.

yeh publishing on one-hit wonders make tonz

the fact that I don't visit a "newsagent" on the regular probably reduces communal feeling slightly, but also probably reduces cover-centric tabloid culture slightly

do brits really not get to read the paper at the weekend without going outside?

I mean, if you want, shift to films or books or any of the other media that are suffering from internet. I realise the point can always be dodged, (cinemas make money from popcorn or some shit), but it's still there: newspapers are fundamentally different in that they are a sort-of con: pay for something virtually valueless yet expensive by packaging it with sellable stuff. xp

film and books books are not suffering from internet, they are suffering from being crass, absurdly expensive, bad, and less compelling than the internet.

Singles never make money. They are used to promote albums and Greatest Hits.

But the masters and the compositions, that's publishing.

xpost film masters

also not everyone who likes news likes computers

also not everyone who likes news likes computers
this *doesn't matter* because the people who buy the newspapers *don't pay for them*.

Paper route ("paper round") culture is not as prevalent in the UK as the US. Maybe in the suburbs you might get some underpaid kid doing this but in the main you are getting up, pulling on jeans and going the 100 yards or so between you and the paper shop, which you are also doing because you need TEA MILK.

Sorry, I don't get that. Isn't it the point of the poll to find out who does?

xpost

i'm really not a call-now kind of guy

but you should call now

newspapers are fundamentally different in that they are a sort-of con: pay for something virtually valueless yet expensive by packaging it with sellable stuff.

How is that different from the internet?

xp

Sorry, I don't get that. Isn't it the point of the poll to find out who does?
This is what I'm trying to explain! All the people who buy newspapers don't pay for them in the sense that a newspaper costs eg £100 to run for a year, and all the cash from the readers contributes about £30 of that at best. The rest comes from classified and display advertising.

Classifeds have gone to ebay and craiglists, display has gone to the net. That £30 that comes from readers will never be enough to *pay* for the cost of creating the newspaper.

How is that different from the internet?
You can charge incredibly large sums for adverts and classifieds in newspapers; you can't charge fuck-all for them online, especially not in the US with a giant competitor offering them for free (craigslist)

Can we stop with the tortured analogies between newspapers and businesses that are nothing like print newspapers?

Yeah all media is completely different. I don't want to wind up on chaki's board of shame.

so not the same old story at all, then

Newspapers are WAY different from music!

yes!

Definitely!

"They said x would happen. It didn't yet. Now they're saying y will happen. Therefore, y won't happen."

do brits really not get to read the paper at the weekend without going outside?

-- gabbneb, Thursday, April 3, 2008 11:50 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

no idea who threw up that idea. i was a paperboy on a sunday, and a lot of people had 'em delivered.

Paper route ("paper round") culture is not as prevalent in the UK as the US. Maybe in the suburbs you might get some underpaid kid doing this but in the main you are getting up, pulling on jeans and going the 100 yards or so between you and the paper shop, which you are also doing because you need TEA MILK.

-- suzy, Thursday, April 3, 2008 11:57 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

lol at 'in the suburbs', i guess meaning most places-where-people-live here. to be fair a tenner an hour is pretty good when you're 15 (and this is when £10 could get you five pints and a blah blah blah) too.

sunday papers heavy as hell tho

tell me about it

music is to subvert into mind the laws of life..?-- newspapers exist to inform day t' day. who does this well?

ew newspaper

Only when I know I'm in it.

re newspapers and music industry: stet, i've got it! we'll GO ON TOUR! and SELL T-SHIRTS! hoo, just wait till i present that fucker at the next digital strategy meeting.

"Er, what if you subscribe to a newspaper?"

Never of course.

Dude, you go to university?

(I was being snarky of course. If you sub then you pay for it duh)

Funny how this thread has been all newspaper v. internet and no-one's mentioned television as a medium for news etc

I was going to read this thread but then by the time I'd got through the first 50 posts I was all like BAN TUOMAS! and I lost interest.

Seriously though.

Funny how this thread has been all newspaper v. internet and no-one's mentioned television as a medium for news etc

-- Tom D., Friday, April 4, 2008 10:23 AM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

or radio. maybe 24-hour news tv makes some difference -- to people's expectations of what news 'is' too.

it's only in real crises that 24-hour news has any value; so, everything becomes a crisis for them.

tv and radio have never broken much news -- what they call "breaking news" is just "an event we heard about first", so they've never posed a real threat to newspapers. Except that they made news not worth paying for.

I still don't get why you think the news PAPER is only good for real time news. What do you think of libraries?

what?

it's only in real crises that 24-hour news has any value

but then if the crisis is serious enough the mainstream channels go all rolling news too so what's the point?

But television does break news stories, for example, the hidden threat lurking in your shower drain.

. . .and what it means for your weekend

And that dry-cleaner guy who was overcharging people! They got him good!

I still don't get why you think the news PAPER is only good for real time news.
What are you talking about?

and SELL T-SHIRTS!
You know Gannett just opened a USA Today shop selling ... t-shirts and that

they think it's going to be a 'key revenue stream'

The poll is not whether the newspaper publishing business is profitable. I of course agree it is not. I thought the poll was about who here buys a newspaper and perhaps why. The pollster acknowledges that the sample set here is skewed to the internet-savvy.

Tom. D. and suzy OTM. People will always need milk.

Hurting it is called the Paper Chase.

I still don't get why you think the news PAPER is only good for real time news.
What are you talking about?

-- stet, Friday, April 4, 2008 9:10 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Well perhaps I am misunderstanding what you're talking about but what I meant was that newspapers have historically been used to do things that intangible media cannot do. A really dumb example would be for wrapping up fish or other stinky matter after you read it.

A less stupid example is that prosecutors keep a complete stack of TV guides around because to remind witnesses of what they were doing. Apparently more people can remember what they were doing by reference to the TV schedule and that's just not something that can easily be recalled online.

I totally agree with you that the majority of publishers will lose money on papers and probably stop printing dailies as we know them by 20020.

lol 2020

xposts

felicity, i've been following -- or trying to follow -- your postings here with increasing incredulity.

stet and i both work for a daily newspaper. it's all very well saying "people will always need milk" but, as stet has pointed out several times now, you won't get any milk if the milk company doesn't exist.

our company, for better or worse, is concentrating on digital publishing. like almost every publisher in the western world, it sees little future for the type of daily and sunday papers we make -- middle-to-high-ish-brow, left-leaning, serious, unsensational -- and i have to say, i agree.

it's not up to you, the reader, to decide whether or not the paper's there for you to buy. it's up to our bosses. and, to be honest, i think they think the writing's on the wall. i reckon we'll limp on for a good couple of decades yet, but the product we're making (actually: it won't be "we"; i intend to be out of the business completely within the next six or seven years) will be a pale shadow of its former self. to return to the milk analogy: it'll be like one of those little pots of UHT stuff you get on the train.

I totally agree with you that the majority of publishers will lose money on papers and probably stop printing dailies as we know them by 20020

right, hang on, i'm totally lost now. if you agree with that, i'm afraid i've no idea what point you think you're trying to make. sorry.

anyway, this:

You know Gannett just opened a USA Today shop selling ... t-shirts and that

ok, we have to follow suit. i want one with TGD's byline pic on it -- the consumptive-byron one :)

I agree with you! And I'm sorry you're going to be out of a job.

What I am saying is that the industry knows about the herd mentality and it's too bad most everyone misperceives thinks as "free" when they're NOT and now we people complaining about the crappy milk and how the industry sucks, which it does. I guess it's the media barons who can afford the artisanal $40-a-pound cheese.

Maybe it's a cultural thing. I just hate to see people give up.

so what does your "the music industry said the same this is the same old story" comment mean?

Let's save that for another time. I really like live music, and I never sell my records.

I don't mean what did you mean abuot music. You said:
Print media will always be relevant. It's the same old story as digitizing music. Some people never learn.
which is totally confusing, because you also agree that it doesn't matter if they stay relevant or not, if they shut!

I do not agree with that.

They shut because people think they can get something for nothing.

It doesn't matter why they shut, if they shut.

What's that old adage about history repeating?

some people never learn

You got that right.

I agree with you! And I'm sorry you're going to be out of a job

heh, i'm not! i mean, i could probably stick in there for a good few years yet -- for some reason i seem to be regarded as quite good at what i do, and my yearly appraisal last month said i'm "highly motivated", which made me laugh for about 20 minutes -- but i'd really rather chop off my balls. it's a depressing, panicking industry almost entirely devoid of good ideas, and i just want out. so i'm back at university part-time doing something else, and if that doesn't work out ... well, i'll find something else to do.

I just hate to see people give up.

am i giving up? i guess i am, yes. but i feel that the damage began an awfully long time ago now -- long before i got into journalism (i've been a staff hack for 10 and a half years, and was freelancing as a student before that for another two or three), when newspapers failed to realise just how precarious their position was, and dismissed the internet as a little fad in which they could afford to invest next to nothing.

i blame myself for not paying more attention, too. shoulda realised which way the wind was blowing back before i graduated. either way: some of it's been fun. and, from a purely cynical/mercenary point of view, if i can continue to make money from journalism then i shall.

one thing, anyway -- to bring the thread back on topic -- i'm pretty sure i'll continue to buy a newspaper every day. will it continue to be the one i work for at the moment?

we shall see.

(by which i mean "heh, i'm not sorry ...")

roffles

roffling is all i can do to stay sane at work these days :/

i was generally roffling

yep, me too :)

It's interesting to see what has happened to the few aspects of the print media that have already been entirely superseded by the Internet. Classified ads are on their way to entirely migrating to the Web, and that field is now not dominated by any media corporation but by Craigslist which I think is non-profit-making. Then there are encyclopedias. I read somewhere that Encyclopedia Britannica recently printed its last ever paper encyclopedia, and has entirely migrated to the Net. The interesting thing being that it's Wikipedia that has gained the monopoly there, not Britannica. In both these areas, big media has failed to gain a foothold, and it's Web 2.0 non-profit outfits that have become the defaults. I wonder if something like this isn't eventually going to happen to newspapers, ie the Guardian et al. are actually wasting their resources pouring it into the Net, because ultimately some other Web 2.0 style revolution in news-gathering is going to sweep it all away, in the same way that Wikipedia one-upped Britannica.

Britannica really dropped the ball with their Fluxblog entry.

Yeah that's a good observation.

I think that may happen, except for some print papers that have charged really high fees for online access from the beginning like WSJ. Fox has different online strategies for WSJ and the NY Post, I guess for the different demographics.

Aside from display classifieds do papers charge a lot for garbage like those real estate and coupon inserts that always clutter up the subways?

xpost

real estate is one of the biggest money makers

Ironically, googling Britannica just now I came across
this (which actually looks quite interesting).

oh and maybe off topic but speaking of online strategies MLB are the masters of monopolizing content that one would think would be public domain newsworthy. They even sued some fantasy leagues for using "their" statistics.

by 2020 everyone will get all their news from their friends' Twitters

and a microblogging aggregate service will monitor them all to spot trends and auto-publish big stories to a wider audience

I actually got the WSJ until Murdoch took it over. It really is/was a good paper if you ignore the editorial page, but I couldn't stomach putting any money in NewsCorp's coffers.

I dunno, if you follow this line of reasoning the source will always be useful as a frame of reference.

Different news gatherers will always be granted different levels of access to the newsmakers and the byline will matter, unless either (1) the world leaders do twitters or (2) in the future all opinions are formed by sheer consensus (which judging by yelp and board function poll is not likely).

I find the WSJs coverage a lot less slanted than the NYTimes. It has a pleasing soullessness a la the Economist. Also the movie reviews are always right. Always.

xpost

I think the twitter/news aggregator might well be the kind of model that will emerge! We've already got news aggregators, but of course they rely on real actual newspapers for their content. So the problem looks like one of where to get the content. But Wikipedia has shown that it's a problem that can be solved. I note, too, that the BBC already goes in for some "Web 2.0" newsgathering techniques - on breaking stories on their website there's generally a box in which you can post text/images direct to the BBC if you happen to be near where the bomb exploded/earthquake happened etc.

Incidentaly how well are wire services doing right now?

Just reading on that Britannica blog I linked to above, the decline in newspaper readership actually started in 1984, ie well before the Internet.

Also WSJ (like Tribune Co.) spends the extra money to make the printing smudgeworth. Seriously, at least 50% of the reason I switched from the NYT was that I got tired of showing up at work looking like a Chitty Chitty Bang Bang extra.

xpost True that is good for unplanned phenomena where you don't need a press pass. Actually Wiki is a good place to get breaking news too.

Some interesting points made here. Newspapers are being "unbundled", and their constituent parts are migrating to the Net or elsewhere, ie classified ads = Craigslist, op-ed page = political blogs etc. But the really difficult thing will be to replicate in-depth investigative reporting in the Internet age.

^^^ this is basically my one note

also newspapers have a great ability to put stories that people aren't interested in front of them. A scandal about say dentistry is easy to hush up or blow over if only dentists read about it. If it's on the front page of a newspaper that everyone is reading, it has much more impact.

I think that's an interesting point. When I read a (paper version of a) newspaper, I do it in a much more passive way than if I look at it online. I won't read the whole thing, but I'll still end up reading stuff that I'm not necessarily interested but which may after all turn out to be interesting. Reading on the Internet seems to be quite different, much narrower. It's ironic how when we've now got a vast amount of stuff at our fingertips, we actually just end up skimming through the dozen things on Favourites or RSS feed.

Reading on the internet can be a bit like standing in one of those booths that blows the dollar bills around.

Serious question for the newsies: how much thought goes into the front-back (or obverse/reverse whatever you call it) layout in print newspapers? Is there a conscious advertorial policy there?

Because sometimes I can't tell which is the front of the clippings my mother sends me, Dear Abby: or recipe for pot roast in a jiffy.

xpost I am opposed to WiFi access in subways for that reason. It is good for society in general to shove broadsheets in people's faces where they have no other reading options. Wouldn't kill people to read a paper.

i can't really help felicity -- back page in uk is usually business or sport "front" page, rarely adverts

xp, somehow!

a man in a subaru puts one on my doorstep every morning (except one day he had a lexus instead)

but I'll still end up reading stuff that I'm not necessarily interested but which may after all turn out to be interesting

exactly, because dudes like me were taught that our job, when designing pages and writing headlines etc, was to try to make sure the reader stops and goes: "ooh, what's that? i have to read it." (i was taught exactly this; i hope i passed it on to stet, although i almost certainly forgot and he learned something better from someone else.)

yes, this model works to an extent with a list of headlines in, say, an RSS aggregator or on the front page of a site, but there's so much more goes into it on the printed page -- pictures, standfirsts, captions, pullquotes, the interplay between them -- and that's even before you get into the actual notion of design-as-impact, which is something that very few news websites manage to pull off (and very few newspapers, too, but fuck it: i've won awards for this kind of shit, and i rarely get to blow my own trumpet).

however: as i said above, it's all academic when the farmer decides to cull the dairy herd for cheap mince, eh?

how much thought goes into the front-back (or obverse/reverse whatever you call it) layout in print newspapers? Is there a conscious advertorial policy there?

not entirely sure what you mean: are you talking about what's on each side of any given single sheet? if so: none. usually. although stet: you remember your uma thurman page?

not entirely sure what you mean: are you talking about what's on each side of any given single sheet?

Yes. Thanks.

no: certainly not in the UK. the only time i've thought about it is if, say, i've got a cut-out coupon on the page (eg a bank mandate for a charity or something; had a few of those when i worked on our paper's saturday magazine (which, incidentally, is when i won the majority of the aforementioned awards: i'm a hasbeen these days)). i'd try to make sure it, heh, backed on to an advert rather than a feature, just so people weren't fucking up their mag :)

but then i think i cared more about that magazine than anybody else in the world, so i doubt anyone noticed, cared or thanked me :(

I notice! Thank you.

that means a lot! thank *you* :)

usually. although stet: you remember your uma thurman page?
Yeh, this rocked (she was slicing the page open with her kill bill katana, and you could see the page behind through. looked cooler than it sounds

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

For some the newspaper someone else is reading on the bus is always more interesting than the one you're reading

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

interesting. not as predictable as i imagined.

we're still DOOMED, but not quite as worthless as i thought.

wd be interested to know US/UK/other breakdown there, mind.

how many non-UK'ers voted?

I did. (A few times a year.)

US here. (never)

US here also, I voted 5-7 times a week, subscribe to NYTimes

US here. Several times / year.

it's not up to you, the reader, to decide whether or not the paper's there for you to buy. it's up to our bosses. and, to be honest, i think they think the writing's on the wall.

Is Vatche Panos your boss at the newspaper? He's not a very good boss.

do, uh.
why did the chicken cross the road?
to get the chinese newspaper.

do you get it???

neither do, i. i get the times.