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Opinion
Waste Paper: Communications and the Decline of Print
10/4/2007
On some advice column, somewhere on the Internet, I recently read a rant about how our culture is once again degrading itself, as expressed by changes in normative social behavior in public places. What particularly struck me as possibly "made up" was the author's rant that in crowded subway cars people have lost the art of folding a newspaper tightly as they read it during commuting. His complaint was that people no longer bothered and had offensive, "wide stance" newspaper reading habits.Now, maybe you live in or visit a large city with a good mass transit system. If so, I'm very interested in your observations about this, but when I visit large cities and use mass transit, what I see is a lack of people reading anything. Mostly they're listening to an iPod-like device or looking bored. If they're not looking bored, then they are teenagers, there are a pack of them, and they are annoying others by not being bored, which means they are <gasp> probably actually talking to each other.
In fact, it's been a decade or more since anyone stuck a rustling newspaper in my face on a crowded bus or subway car. From my perspective, if we are in fact losing the art of tightly folding a newspaper while reading it, it is because (a) fewer people are reading newspapers and (b) those who do so have more room to read it unfolded because of the fact that there are fewer other newspaper readers, and thus more newspaper air space.
It's well known that print newspaper subscriptions are declining. Even readership online is something mainstream media outlets worry about, and, thus, The New York Times recently ended its "Times Select" subscriptions, which had required an additional annual payment to access certain choice content. (The Times, by the way, is entering the higher education arena this fall with a series of educational offerings, including a webcast next week about student technology use and expectations, produced in collaboration with the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP), titled "Education in Exponential Times," with Diana Oblinger (Educause), Joel Hartman (University of Central Florida), and Times futurist in residence, Michael Rogers.
Electronic News
Are print newspapers following the lead of print newsletters? Remember those? Where 10 years ago I might have received 15 to 20 printed newsletters a month, I now get only two or three in the mail, but I get hundreds of e-mail newsletters a month. SCUP, mentioned above, was a pioneer in the e-mail newsletter realm, first publishing "SCUP Bitnet News," now "SCUP Email News," in October of 1987--20 years ago this month. Nevertheless, it took us more than an additional decade to stop printing our expensive, quarterly paper newsletter, which was called "SCUP News." Now I wonder why we don't call our e-mail newsletter "SCUP News" instead of "SCUP Email News," which sounds a little ... antiquated?
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