thanks admin

Having said all this, I do dislike newsprint on my fingers, and I want traditional newspapers (especially their test kitchens – SF Chron I am a looking at you!) to not just survive, but thrive. The sterling content should be fairly compensated, and unfortunately, I don’t think advertising is going to cut it. I want writers (in any outlet)in the field to be fairly compensated.

I don’t have the answers.
But I am glad everyone is in the same (electronic)room, talking it out.

P.S. I am very excited to meet Mark Bitterman at a Salt, Caramel and Chocolate class at Recchuiti confections in SF at the end of the month!

As a reader I will read anything that comes my way (I don’t enjoy radio talk)
whether it be books newspapers or magazines and even a blog: the real dilemma you people as writers face is where you go from here into the future and have it be financially still viable to make a living doing that.

I’m not ready for my Kindle DX just yet. I don’t mind a little newsprint on my fingers.

I do dwell in the electronic world too (obviously). But real newspapers and my New Yorker are remants of civilization that is leaving us.

I am not sure what you are asking us to deduce when in your second paragraph you are differentiating the newspaper such as the L.A. Times vs the internet with regards to readership nos and the comment you make :
“it’s pointless to define “newspaper” as that thing that lands on your driveway (or in your bushes)…”

Isn’t that the whole point of your discussion? Comparing all media?

News is not necessarily the newspaper as we know it, but certainly the newspaper is as we know it.

Or this would not even be an issue!

Have u tried to get a seventeen year old to read a newspaper?

I don’t believe that it will be financial straits that will be their demise (altho the two will go hand in hand) – it is rather those that are so computer and internet addicted that actually holding a newspaper becomes tedious: remember the way our parents taught us to fold a newspaper….

The internet and newspapers DO go together as far as current events go; but first the internet is cheaper and second to the young: it is much more glamourous to sit in a coffee shop with a computer rather than a newspaper which is woesome indeed.

If a site like Twitter would not have caught on the way it did, then perhaps I would be singing a different tune: Who would have thought in this world that people would become addicted to such a web-site except that it provides in-the-instant news which, unfortunately our young need: in-the-minute NOW instantaneous fulfillment without the concept of patience.

That, and who the hell cares who saw Ashton Kutcher in the can at Le Bernadin? I guarantee that wasn’t a headline in any newspaper I read.

When universities begin offering online courses for schooling: the future is being written on the wall. When did we predict that instead of attending a class, we could listen to the lecture online?

I remember when reading a newspaper was considered cool and a sign of intellgence way back in the days I needed to impress. To me, it is still a sign.

(absolutely no puns were intended in this comment)

As a reader, my problem with online content is, as you hint at, choosing quality over quantity. if I’m looking for the perfect recipe, the ability to find multiple options online and compare them is wonderful, but I don’t have so much free time that I can do the same thing with content as plentiful as yours, MR. To add to the confusion, in blogs as well as books, what’s popular isn’t always what’s good, so running down the Google list isn’t necessarily the best path to greatness (any more than shopping the endcaps of the grocery store leads to a great meal).

What’s the answer? I dunno either – but I’ll keep reading here to find out. Not just the blog posts, but the ensuing discussions too.

The internet makes this difficult because news entities that were big fish in a small pond will find themselves small fish in a big ocean. Much more fierce competition for less advertising revenues.

The scariest thing about newspapers folding or consolidating as they move to internet only is the potential demise of local reporting. Particularly lcoal investigative reporting. I have recourse to CNN.com for national news, but what internet news content provider is going to fund an investigation into fraud at my local sewage treatment plant?