The Ombudsman at the Washington Post has an good
article about the future of newspapers (something dear to my heart). But there is one point where he misses the mark. He says:
Some of this is because newspapers are bulky things that a lot of people don’t have time for and because, increasingly, people glance at them online. But this decline probably also says a lot about newspapers not being sufficiently compelling in the day-to-day lives of readers.
Newspapers are compelling in the inter-connected world we live. Without them and the context they provide, it would be hard for many people to take action. Nonetheless, the problem with physical newspapers is that it takes too much time to find things. For me to page through the entire paper (even a short 28 page product) to find headlines of interest, without reading the articles, takes 10 minutes. That’s time that I don’t have considering I’m only going to find 2-3 articles of interest. Newspapers need to remember that they are competing with time – not other media outlets.
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