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http://www.omniture.com --> Mail Tribune Blogs --> --> « And we’re off … er, Play Ball! … er, Gentlemen, start your … Esther the Molester Meets the Mail Tribune » Paperless world Posted by Bob Hunter I’m not so sure that we’re all that close to the demise of the printed newspaper — in fact, I’m pretty sure we aren’t. There are a lot of 50-plus (maybe even 40-plus) folks who are committed newspaper readers and they’re going to want that paper to keep coming for years/decades. But that still leaves a lot of other folks who would rather get their news/info online and that group will continue to grow, while the avid newspaper reader group will be shrinking through attrition (that’s a nice way of saying we all die eventually). I read a piece a couple of days ago that got my attention. Here’s the pertinent excerpt: “… Reuters reports on a survey of 1,262 teachers in grades 5-12 conducted in autumn 2006 by the Carnegie-Knight Task Force on the Future of Journalism Education. Apparently, 57 percent of teachers use Internet-based news in the classroom with some frequency. In comparison, a mere 28 percent use daily papers in class. Also, 31 percent use national TV news in class, while only 13% use local TV news in class. Said one surveyed teacher: “Students do not relate to newspapers at all — any more than they would to vinyl records.” According to Reuters, “Teachers prefer printed papers, but only eight percent said the newspaper was a student’s preferred choice. Seventy-five percent placed it at the bottom of the student list. …” So the change is upon us and we’ve got to respond by doing more online (like this blog), while remembering that we still have a lot a readers (a heavy majority at this point) who get their news on paper. This entry was posted on Friday, February 2nd, 2007 at 11:42 am and is filed under From the Editor . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response , or trackback from your own site. One Response to “Paperless world” Sam Goodson Says: February 2nd, 2007 at 7:58 pm I agree with you Bob papers will probably be around a long time but their importance to people will lessen more and more with time. I think people are much more interested in news from a wider viewpoint than most papers give. As families spread out more to new areas of the continent or the world, people tend to widen their view on what is news. The newspaper that succeeds in realizing that local news is but one aspect of the big picture will be the one that survives. The ones that stay focused in the narrow segment of geography really will limit their own life span. I think the Mail Tribune has taken a few baby steps in the right direction in the last few years but there is still a long way to go to catch up with the rest of the technical world. Keep rolling forwards before the tsunami of irrelevancy bites you in the tail Leave a Reply Mail Tribune Blogs is proudly powered by WordPress Entries (RSS) and Comments (RSS) .