Politics “I’m the only guy in here reading a newspaper…”
A few weeks ago, BBC reporter Matthew Wells flew out to Seattle to do a piece about online journalism, our city’s local newspaper war, and the future of newspapers in general.
During his time here, he went to “one of Seattle’s stylish and ubiquitous coffee shops” (a phrase that sounds great when said in a British accent) and found he was the only person reading an actual paper newspaper (the rest of the customers were reading news on their laptops). He also came up to the Stranger’s offices to talk to me about this controversial story, went down to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to speak to the P-I’s managing editor about that paper’s online future, and had coffee with Dan from Seattlest.
What did Mr. Wells find? Well, his piece aired Friday on the BBC World Service, and he kindly sent me an MP3 of the broadcast. You can listen to it here.
The piece is quite interesting, although, for the record, I didn’t tell him I’d never bought a newspaper. I do buy newspapers off the street every once in a long while, mostly when I’m in another city. But I don’t subscribe. Being 28, I’ve never seen the point of subscribing to a daily newspaper. By the time I was old enough to afford a subscription, all the daily news I wanted was available for free online. I subscribe to magazines, because I like to read longer pieces in print, and when it went live last fall I subscribed to the New York Times’ TimesSelect because I didn’t think I could live without Frank Rich’s Op-Ed column. But a newspaper subscription — call me young and foolish, but I see it as a waste of money.
Bitter much?
News flash: This just in, sky is blue!