Somebody, plz, tell me what the f she means.....

Many papers just dipped a toe into the web until they could see how they could make money, granted. Still, that does me little good to find out what new and exciting changes we could make today.

And telling me we need to change is worthless. Giving me concrete, new ideas may not be.

 

The problem isn't attracting readers. Most major newspaper web sites are doing that in spades. Also, the youth outpouring for Obama should dispel the myth that younger readers are only interested in Britney Spears. Sheesh, a lot of older readers don't care about politics, either, but I don't see them slapped around in these here forums.

The problem is convincing advertisers that the readers online are worth as much as the readers in print. Or at least finding an advertising model that everyone agrees works. Solve that problem, and the situation for newspapers turns around in a hurry. You make more money, and unless you have a large print readership, you can get away with dropping expensive printing plants and newspaper distribution costs. Yes, you lose circulation, but subscription prices have always been set at a loss.

Saving the printed form of newspaper might be cause not worth fighting. Saving the newspaper's brand name is, especially with that brand name still carrying an enormous amount of weight.

 

Did you somehow miss that we were talking about high school kids?

 

Here's what those numbers probably mean, Cap'n: 110,000 folks who just retired have begun to chip away at their Lifetime Reading Lists, all those books they've been meaning to get to but haven't because they've been too damn busy working and raising children. I doubt it's a bunch of teenagers or twentysomethings who are running out and buying "Pride and Prejudice" -- unless it's at gunpoint.

 

Your anti-Jane Austen rant is a little embarrasing. Have you actually read her?

Oh, and most people I know work, raise kids and find time to read. They don't save it for retirement. They just shut off the TV.

 

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So your kid doesn't like to read and it's the school's fault? My daughter reads 2-3 books a week, not including those required for school. She's in high school, likes her teachers and she' not bored in the least.

 

No. But it was also unclear from your comment that I quoted above that you were saying no high school kids 30 years ago liked Austen either. In any case, I do have to question that assertion as well. So if kids 30 years ago didn't like Austen, and kids nowadays don't like Austen, then who's buying 100,000-plus copies outside the academic realm? Did those kids from 30 years develop a taste for reading Austen and other classics as they aged? If so, then that "outdated" reading list didn't destroy people's taste for reading after all.

If there's any reason that kids nowadays read less, I think it's more because of the array of new entertainment competing for their time. Hundreds of satellite channels, gazillions of Web sites, satellite radio stations, iTunes, etc. I mean, compared to Victorian times, we could say people from 40 years ago didn't read that much either.

And Bob Cook's post is right: It's asinine to assume young people today only care about superficial celebrity gossip.

 

I consider myself reasonably intelligent but I don't have a clue what that sentence means.

A whole bunch of bafflegab and strings of weasel words.

 

I have to tell my kids to quit reading, turn out the lights and go to bed every night.

Of course, they don't have a TV in their rooms. If they did, they probably wouldn't ever pick up a book.

 

20,000 posts JR? When did you have time to become a literary expert?

I'm sure there are plenty of adults who can carve out time to read books. And there are plenty of others, like me, who are running here for that kid, and there for that kid -- and doing the million other things necessary to maintain family life -- in addition to working their brains out and traveling on the job more than a little, who have all they can do to keep "current" with periodicals. Books, for the most part, simply have to wait -- and for those of us who love them, it's a great sacrifice. Such is life/parenting/modern prioritizing.

 

Monroe, I don't understand the "pandering to their ADD" part. Kids with a learning disability are being 'pandered' to?

 

I'm talking about short attention spans, not clinical conditions.