Newspapers

I think I have given in. I no longer want to read the print newspaper.

A few months ago, I decided that I wanted to support the news, so I became a National Public Radio member and bought a Thursday-Sunday home-delivery subscription to the Boston Globe. I have enjoyed my subscription...to some extent. I consistently read the "Ideas" section of the Sunday paper, thoroughly read the paper one of the four days I get it, and glance at it other days. I occasionally clip things to send to my parents.

However, at least one day out of four, the paper goes straight to the recycling bag.

The paper waste is one of several reasons I am thinking about stopping my paper subscription and reading the newspaper on the computer.

Another strike against newspapers is that I find them cumbersome. Though the idea of drinking coffee or having breakfast over the paper is appealing, the reality is that it can be very messy and hard to coordinate. In order to see an article at the top of the page, I have to either fold the paper in half or put my plate on the bottom of the page, then move it when I want to turn the page. The computer screen, on the other hand, is right in front of my face and stands up vertically so that I don't have to hold it up or arrange to look down at it like I would a print paper. The print on the screen can be small, but it’s certainly larger than newspaper print and you can enlarge it with a click of the mouse. Overall, I find it more relaxing to drink coffee in front of a computer screen than with a newspaper. So away goes the romantic argument for reading the newspaper at the breakfast table.

If I ever have a son named Mortimer and make him ham and eggs for breakfast, I’ll go out and buy a paper so he can read the comic strips while my husband reads the news and I do the dishes. Okay?

Now for more important considerations. I find that I learn more when I read articles online because it's easy for me to look up things I don't know. I can use Times Topics, on the New York Times website to brush up on the topic of an article so that I better understand the details of the situation in question. I can pull up a Google map if I'm reading an article about an unfamiliar part of the world. I can easily search the archives online.

As an aside, on one hand, virtual news seems frightening, because there’s nothing tangible about it. But tangible and accessible are different things. Microfiche records of old papers are tangible. But I would argue that the online archives are more accessible.

The main reason I bought the newspaper subscription was to do my part to save the failing print media. I’m rethinking that argument, because it's too late to prevent the decline of print media. It's already declining in more ways than one. Papers are struggling to stay afloat. Within the last year, the Christian Science Monitor stopped its print edition. It now publishes exclusively online. The New York Times Company, which owns the Boston Globe, forced Globe employees (in the Boston Newspaper Guild) to accept cuts or face closing of the paper earlier this year. Luckily for everyone, they reached an agreement. There are probably many other examples of struggling newspapers.

Furthermore, the quality of the print newspaper is declining as well. The Globe's financial strife has led it to go overboard with advertising in the print paper. Section A of Friday's paper seemed to be mostly about Macy's bras for big-chested women and less about the news. There were multiple two-page spreads of Macy's ads. No article gets that much contiguous space in the paper. Online, though there are lots of ads, they bother me less than those Macy's ads. Online, I can look at an ad and click it away. But I had to look at those buxom bra models every time I turned the page in my newspaper.

In defense of those Macy's ads, though, I'd rather have papers sell ads to make extra money to fund thorough reporting than save money by investing less in their stories. If an ad allows for another edit and another fact-check and another interview, it's worth it. At least ads are explicit. You can see when the paper earns extra money through ads. It's not immediately obvious when the paper saves money by spending less on its stories. Fabrications and errors can go undetected, at least for a little while.

If it’s too late to prevent the decline of the print media, do I want to at least keep it from declining further, the way I want to make global warming less of a disaster? No. I have decided that it's okay if the big newspapers stop their print editions and go exclusively online. I think it would be better for newspapers to use all their resources to make a great website with great news, rather than siphoning off resources into their dying print editions. So I don't think "trying to save the print media" is a valid reason to subscribe the Globe home delivery.

What to do instead? I don't want to simply stop my paper subscription and read the paper online for free, because I know that good reporting costs money, and one of the reasons I got the print edition was in order to support the paper I read. I would really like to just make a donation to the paper. The big newspapers, unlike public radio, are for-profit businesses. Maybe that is why they don't take donations.

Instead, I think I will purchase the Globe's electronic edition. It's a copy of the paper as it appears in print that you can read on- or offline. My main goal is to pay for the news. However, it could be nice to see the final version of the paper as it appears in print rather than just viewing the dynamic website. Having a copy of the paper would give me a way to read it cover to cover (or not), rather than just cherry picking articles from the endless website.

To close, I want to remind everyone that I tend to write my blog posts over coffee in the morning and that you can read them the same way. I go well with tartines…