Thursday, April 30, 2009

A dinosaur tale

According to a Jerusalem Post report Canada’s National Post will not be publishing a printed Monday edition in an effort to save costs as of June 29th but will carry only an online edition for Mondays. This is allegedly a ‘summer savings’ mode. Now this is really looking like the beginning of the end for the National Post. I realize some of you will cheer but it isn’t only the beginning of the end for the National Post but the harbinger of what is to come for most local newspapers.

I rarely buy the National Post or any other newspaper and I suspect I am not alone in that regard. Twenty years ago, I use to subscribe regularly to newspapers but as the papers started piling up in the blue box (mostly unread) it became just another thing adding to the mess in my home so I canceled my subscriptions.

It use to be when you needed to buy/sell something, look for a job or have a television viewing guide for the week you could not afford not to buy a local paper at least once a week but with literally everything being online from eBay to Craigslist to Workopolis and Monster; newspapers just do not have a place anymore in our lives and instead have become a bane of our recycling hell. Even those who just bought the Saturday editions for the television schedules can opt out of the process and just read the seven day schedule off their television broadcast station courtesy of their local cable company.

I still occasionally buy newspapers when an extraordinary event happens or I have to move and need to wrap my glassware in newsprint but I often find more timely information online or on the telly than I do in print. Bloggers haven’t replaced print journalists and never will until bloggers have the resources that a magazine or newspaper provides, but the place newspapers held in our lives, is gone forever now that life moves online without the fuss or mess.

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