My daughter laughs at me for “still” reading paper newspapers. It’s apparently quite “out” with the younger crowd, a fact that likely underlies the rather systematic collapse of one paper after another. She points to a number of on-line newspapers, her favorite being The Huffington Post. She claims that regular newspapers are too slow, both to read and with respect to news updating. And it’s quite true; most of what I read in my morning paper, I already saw on the TV news the night before. But I don’t really count on the paper for timeliness as much as I count on it for depth and analysis.
Strangely enough the traditional newspapers have all established web-based versions, but I’m not sure these are getting the uptake from the younger generation. Just like the statistic I read recently about how a large percentage of young people prefer the satirical The Daily Show for their news instead of network news.
Anyhow, I’ve been getting “into” The Huffington Post lately and I like it. I find myself going there more frequently and perhaps it will soon become a daily affair. There’s one thing on-line papers don’t do so well though…they’re not as easy to read on the bowl. I may well have to keep my paper “paper” going for its cathartic effects rather than its news value…at least until the iPad comes out in Canada. And of course, there’s another thing one could do with the newspaper in an emergency such as running out of toilet paper. Try doing that with a iPad app!
