Response to: I Don't Expect too Many Tears at the Funeral of Printed News

Anatoliy,

I agree with your viewpoint on the disappearance of printed newspapers. I knew that all newspaper companies were scrambling to come up with with alternatives to keep themselves afloat, but I wasn't aware of The Wall Street Journals clever scheme to to keep people reading their newspaper. I believe The Wall Street Journal may be on to something by tapping into people's disdain for ads and using it to their benefit.

Perhaps this is the way to get newspaper companies to survive? People who watch the news on T.V. or read it online have to deal with the nuisance of ads that keep popping up and interrupt their reading. Hopefully more newspapers will adapt this concept and, for a small fee, we can all read our newspapers without ads. However, there are people who would rather have free news than an ad-less internet page.

I also found your research on elderly people to be very interesting. I wasn't aware so many senior citizens were already utilizing the internet to receive their news. I assumed, as I'm sure most people did, that they were the ones still buying newspaper and would be at a loss of what to do once they became obsolete. I found a website that adds to your information about senior citizens. In it, it states how senior citizens (65+) haven't utilized the internet very much, but people just younger than them (50-64) have grasped onto the internet quite well and use it often.

I like the way you end your blog, with the fact that our society has always been changing and the newspaper industry will find a way to adapt if they want to survive. It goes to show that people have had to adapt to changes before them and many more transitions are in store for the future. It reveals that although the demise of printed news is a big transition for our society, we've already gone through bigger ones and can get through this one too.

-Caitlin Eggman