Why I read the print edition
Ryan Sholin compiled a list of the reasons why he used to read the print edition and how those reasons aren’t the same reasons why he reads news Web sites.
Here are the reasons I picked up a newspaper growing up:
- The sports section - In some ways when I’m home in Ohio I still prefer to read the print edition of the Plain Dealer over the Web edition because cleveland.com sucks.
- Comics
- TV guide
- Movie times
- Occasional story that caught my eye in the Wall Street Journal.
My family also subscribed to Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report while I was growing up. I read both of those, but strongly prefer the Economist these days. The Economist, with its weekly analysis pieces of news from around the world, is the kind of printed product that makes sense today.
Most of the reasons I listed for reading a newspaper don’t make sense anymore for a newspaper. TVguide.com is way easier to use than an actual TV Guide. Movies.com is a Godsend when compared with hard-to-decipher-and-often-wrong movie listings in newspapers.
And certainly, a newspaper should never, ever pay to put weather or movie and TV listings on its Web site. The Web is filled with free Web sites that do those tasks very well. Heck, I have a weather widget on my computer.
Even cleveland.com has several features — like podcasts from beat writers and columnists five days a week — that make the sports section of cleveland.com a better product than the print edition, even if the layout is not very good.
Now, I can’t really read the Wall Street Journal online with its paywall, and I’m not paying the exorbitant fee to get access. That’s the Journal’s problem, not mine.
Sholin wisely points out that the content a newspaper has online shouldn’t be the same as the Web edition:
I think you’re better off sticking with what makes online different: Breaking news, blogs, video, conversation, community, links, aggregation, audio, slideshows, galleries…
Please, don’t try to throw Ann Landers at me online and tell me readers demand it. They want Ann and Abby, they can pick up a print edition. Don’t waste your money and your Web staff’s time by signing sixteen partnerships for movie times and TV listings and comic strips. If I want that online, I know where to find it.
The important take home point here is that the the Web is fundamentally different from a printed product. We all know that from how we use both of them. That’s why newspapers should have unique content in each medium that highlights that mediums strengths.
Newspapers also have to realize that the majority of people get their news from the Web. Printed newspapers don’t fit many of our lifestyles, as Mindy McAdams put it:
In my current lifestyle, I concluded, the printed newspaper just does not fit. I spend a lot of time in front of a computer, in various environments.
In that, I’m not so different from most people in North America.
March 21st, 2008 at 3:05 pm
You know, I just bought a copy of The Economist in the airport last week — specifically because I wanted to read their coverage of Malaysia’s elections — and I enjoyed it so much that I thought I really should subscribe. And why? Not only for the clear, concise writing and the breadth of international coverage (although those are the main course), but also because the table of contents was so clear and useful, and because the fonts and general legibility of all the text were marvelous.