Corporate media is a big, dangerous thing and deserving of several posts. It's not exactly this story. There are smaller, but equally vital local questions we all should ask ourselves about where we get our news and why. Local paper with live (hopefully thinking) news staff engaged in our city - is the story.
Like so many 21 century changes, comparing new media to conventional media has many nuances not easily weighed. Conventional newspapers are going away. I like the ritual of reading from newsprint, the positioning, folding and turning of the pages and the feel of the sheets, the smell of the inks. Reading my paper seems ceremonial.
It took quite a while for me to adjust to online reading on my computer monitor, then my phone. I’ve lost a whole tactile, clipping, saving and sharing experience. What I’ve gained online is the ability to link instantly to different reference sources within an article as I’m reading and leaping right back to where I left off reading. I can comment to the reporter, the paper and other readers and even be a part of a whole forum following each post. It’s a kind of over the breakfast table conversation no longer a real life routine for me. So, I’m hooked.
Real journalism, especially investigative, political journalism is absent but for a tiny number of sources. Newspapers now rely heavily on fluff and filler from corporate news feeds because it’s cheaper than paying live (thinking) reporters. Finding a local newspaper that is responsive to citizen concerns is rare because genuinely local papers are nearly extinct. Our local Coast News is one rare find. This is a free paper that has relied on ads to survive. Now that more of us get our news online, the paper can’t sell ads, so they have had to impose a pay wall. Let’s support this valuable little gem of a paper.
Just 10 things: 1 quarter + 3 dimes + 6 nickels = 85¢ each week, or the one time yearly fee of $44.40.That’s all that’s needed for each week’s read. Mary Fleener’s political cartoon, community letters and Andrew Audet’s Liberty, Liberty and Leadership commentary alone are worth the fee.
Let publisher Jim Kydd and son Chris Kydd know how much this matters to have Coast News online each week. We can also ask them to post our letters, the commentary, etc. in a timely way because we virtual readers anxiously look forward to Thursday’s new edition like everyone does.
