Guy in Starbucks: "It's not even worth it to pick up a newspaper anymore."

I didn't think anybody saw that.

It did work, if you must know. Corndogs are surprisingly breathable.

 

To me, it's an indictment of the quality of what we're getting to put into newspapers.

As Moddy has said over and over again when talking about what newspapers are trying to do with multimedia and other ventures, "give me something to read." Today's newspapers aren't doing that.

Whether that's a soulless editor who shuns the takeout in favor of the six-inch contained to the front story on the latest happenings in Iran, Afghanistan or North Korea or the bean counters who slashed editorial budgets and made it nigh on impossible for a reporter to spend six months on a major investigative piece because the bossman decreed that said reporter has to have five bylines a week regardless of length or quality isn't that important in the long run.

I've decided in my mind that newspapers "getting with the times" by tweeting the council meetings or shooting online video of a crime scene isn't what's going to save newspapers. What's going to save newspapers is writing the kinds of stories that make people sit up and take notice. It's writing the kinds of stories that cause people to say, "did you read that story in today's paper?"

Give me something to read, dammit!

 

That those folks who usually buy newspapers will soon be dead?

 

The problem isn't the readers who says the paper is a liberal rag. The problem is the people I heard walking to and from the Indy 500 saying the paper is so noticeably smaller and content-free, it's not worth picking up.

 

Yeahhhh......

Dude, I know!

But if I didn't write in a Starbucks, then I wouldn't be a real writer, right!?

http://www.hulu.com/watch/11758/family-guy-public-displays-of-writing

 

I, too, hear of people saying newspapers are worthless these days. Then again, these are the same people clamoring to have their kids' little league team in the paper and whine when the score of a game isn't in the next day's paper.

 

Winner, winner.

I will say that I went and got my hair cut today and the guy waiting next to me was reading the section I laid out the night before. So that was cool.

 

Yeah, the poster who said the problem is smaller content is right. The guy who misguidedly thinks the newspaper is liberal is never going to read the paper. But with more content, the people who want to read a paper might return.

 

people think most newspapers suck because most newspapers suck

 

People think most newspapers suck because it's easier to be the guy who complains than the guy who performs.

Is there anything that people think doesn't suck?

 

Even with all the crap my shop has gone through in the past few years, there's still no doubt in my mind that we provide the best news that you can't find anywhere else in sports in this area.

As for that guy, i'd be interested what he thinks about the value of newspapers when that deadly bacteria in the water story is uncovered in print while the TV heads miss it because there's no press release. Or uncovering the arrest of the star running back. Or the broken leg suffered by the third baseman at practice. Or anything else that's not handed to them at a press luncheon.

Also, no newspapers means there's nothing for the TV guys to read the next morning and pawn off as their own news at 6 and 10.

Go buy your 60-inch flat screen TV and bitch about newspapers some more after paying $5 for a cup of coffee. Jackass.