(NOTE: This is an edited edition of a post I published earlier today on the Poynter Institute's weblog
E-Media Tidbits. You can check out the full version there, and see what news pros make of it...)
Yesterday, I found it in my driveway and brought it inside. I thunked it down next to my husband, who was tapping away on his laptop. "Check it out," I said, "It's a different kind of news delivery technology. It's called a
news-paper. This brand is the
Denver Post."
"Like the
Web site?" he asked, nudging it experimentally. Then he shook it out of its orange plastic bag, showering a sheaf of paper two inches thick onto his lap.
"Exactly. And the
podcast. Remember, I started writing that
Carless in Boulder blog on
YourHub? Well, YourHub does a special print edition for Boulder that republishes content from the site. I was curious to see what that looks like, but the only way I can get the print YourHub is to subscribe to either the print Post or
Rocky Mountain News -- another
news-paper."
"Ah. Right, you
posted about that. Where's the YourHub section?"
"That only comes on Thursdays."
"You mean you have to handle all this paper
every day?"
"No, I only paid for Thursdays, Sundays, and holidays."
"You
paid for this?..." he frowned, shaking his head. "How do you search it?"
"It's not really searchable, but it's scannable. See, you can open up the pages wide and see lots of stories. There are no links, though."
"You're kidding! What good is this, then?"
"To be honest, I can't say. But a lot of people like it -- even more than reading news online. They've got some good stories."
"Yeah, look here," he said. "Yesterday a zookeeper at the Denver Zoo got mauled and
killed by a jaguar. They had to shoot the jaguar. A bunch of visitors saw the whole thing."
"Terrible," I replied. "And I'll bet someone has the whole thing on YouTube now. I guess that's one advantage of
not reading this online."
"So what do you do with all this paper when you're done?"
"Recycle it. And throw out the plastic bag."
He shrugged. "Seems like a lot of paper and effort for so little news. I don't see the point."
"Well, I'm giving it a chance. Some of my journalism colleagues swear by this stuff."
"It's your money. At least the screen resolution is decent."