Oi, newspapers. Was reading the New York Times on the wife’s ipad wherein David Carr offered his advice to an ailing Newsweek about how to improve itself in the digital era. Later, while at a cafe, Carr’s observations were still percolating and I thought it quaint to purchase and read an actual, printed newspaper ? you know, for old times. Of the two available ? the Times and the San Francisco Chronicle ? I went for the latter, having once been a contributor (besides, I’d already read the Times).
The cover was well-teased: “A bold new digital world,” festooned with social media-style icons for Google, Apple and Facebook and summed with the drop-head “The many ways Silicon Valley’s Big Three companies are changing how we live, work and play.” Duly tantalized, I bought the $3 loaf of pulp and proceeded to read what amounted to brochure copy that could only have been more lightweight if it were drafted in helium. Moreover, the jump from the front page was wrong (I never did find the continuation of the story) and the Apple story had a massive typo. And we wonder why newspapers are dying. Its bantam-weight coverage aside, couldn’t the Chron at least address it’s mechanical issues? I mean, isn’t there an app for that?
Such inanity is driving me further up the pay-wall, which I will happily scale, cash in hand, to get my fix of pure, unadulterated, 100 percent content. I mean, who uses papers anymore?
