In your opinion, is the demise of print newspaper good for the environment?

Yeah, I think it probably is. Paper production uses a lot of water. It seems that there's a lot of waste with newpapers too. It's sad to see the institution in its twilight. New papers have been around for centuries, so it's the closing of an age. That said, the writing is on wall, and in the long run it will be good. That doesn't really cushion the lost jobs and heartache that many folks are feeling, however.

 

It is clearly good for the environment,, but there are considerable downsides to society.

The first is that there is yet to be an alternative to "boots on the ground" journalism, and without it the potential for government/media/corporate abuse is MUCH greater! Someone must come up with a model that will allow GOOD edited investigitive as well as grass roots reporting on the important issues of the day. Blogs, while useful, are not it!

Some of the often unseen downsides, are the effect that the collapse of the paper industry is having on small forest product communities. Where I live part of the year in Northern Ontario, Canada, almost all the mills are idle/closed/mothballed or at the very least, running skeleton shifts. This in an area of 1000 kms, from Kenora Ont on the west to White River Ont on the east,,, (I'm sure it is just as bad in Quebec and the east!) There are mill towns that are drying up and blowing away in the face of the meltdown. Not just the millworkers, but the bush workers who cut, process, haul the trees, and the legions that do forest management , tree planting, repair and maintenence of machinces etc are ALL suffering.

All these people are waiting for the day when these jobs are going to come back,,,sadly uninformed as to why their lives will never be the same.

While I empathize with the people involved, I recognize that the environment is the winner. For too long, too much fibre has been harvested for the sake of "jobs" with little regard for the true and real environmental cost(s). We had a 50 year boom of forest product employment, during which time the north was warrened with thousands of KMs of logging roads that served to bring this timber to market regardless of it's cost. Those days are thankfully over.

Icarus

 

I'm not as convinced that we're better off without the paper since we don't have an environmentally responsible e-cycling waste stream established that's adhered to.

 

Well there goes the old saying'

"I saw it in writing, it must be true!"

 

Does anyone prefer to read on a computer screen vs printed paper? Newspapers going out of biz is very, VERY bad for the environment. Consumers need to be informed. Unedited, amateur blogs are not reputable sources of journalism. TV reports only give the loudest headlines. We need college educated, professional journalists giving us the full stories behind the headlines-well edited, in writing and on paper.

 

2 points:

The fact that papers are dying is irrespective of e-waste. They are totaly different issues. A healthy newspaper industry won't help a E recycling industry.

Second: The fact that many of us would prefer to read our papers rather than our paper's information on the screen is academic. The trend is (and has been) clear for a long time. The first feature was that for years readership among younger people has dropped off the scale,, reducing circulation. The second has been the complete loss of advertising revenue,,, particularly due to the "Craig'slist" effect on classifieds, but also the other general ad revenue, as well as the "stuffers" This revenue is NEVER going to come back IMHO. Why would I pay for an ad in the paper to sell my used (or new!) car when I can put a free ad complete with 4 pictures on CL and have it sold today?

The long and short of it is that newspapers have missed the boat and nothing has come to fill the void. It is clear that web based content does not pay the bills. Something will come along to fill the void. The only question is will it be a net plus to society or not. I don't think the answer is clear yet.

Every paper (and magazine) in the world is getting smaller, and in fact my local paper comes into my house now only due to habit. There is almost nothing that comes in the door every morning, that I haven't already heard. I wish it were other,, but it is not. It will be curios to see if the current incarnation of the Seattle PI can change the way we pay for and collect our news. I have big doubts.

Icarus

 

I don't see the death of a printed page as the death of the newspaper. We are talking about a change in the method of delivery not a change in the content or a change in the journalists. The great thing about newspapers moving content online is that as a reader I can access content from world class papers from all over the world. I can read the Times, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, etc. In the age of the printed page that simply wasn't possible.

It is interesting that this topic comes up today. My family has been in the newspaper delivery business for 24 years. It started with my brother's single paper route at the age of 10. I got a route at 10 as well. When I was 15 my brother gave me his route to get a "real" job. At the same time my mother and I picked up 4 other routes that had been struggling and combined the 6 routes into 1 large motor route. In it's prime we brought in $1500 (gross) a month for 3 hours work per day. My parents have kept that route for years now and even though circulation has dwindled to 1/3 of what it was when I had it, they were planning on keeping it to help supplement their income when my father retires next year. Today my mother called me to tell me that the paper they deliver is going from 7 days to 3. 60% of the revenue from their business disappeared in a day. My parents have decided it isn't worth the hassle of getting up at 4am on Saturday and Sunday and having every weekend tied up.

Times are changing.

 

JSH,

What you are missing however is that online content is not being paid for relative to it's cost. The online versions have been supported by the print editions of newspapers, and the reality is that with the lack of ad revenue the print edition is dead. With out the print edition, the online edition goes away as well.

Witness the Seattle PI, Seattle Times,, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Chicago Tribune, or almost any other small or big city daily.

Will the NY Times survive? Or the Washington Post or the LA Times? Maybe, but with seriously different (local as well as national/international) content. (The possible exception being the Wall Street Journal, only because Murdock can feed it forever from Fox!) The reality is that the Des Moines Register, or the Cleveland Plain Dealer or any small town daily is going to be dead,,, sooner or later.

Then where will we hear about our local school board, or corrupt police or building inspector or what have you?

Icarus

 

I haven't bought a paper on a regular basis for 20 years, so it doesn't bother me to see them go. It will take a little time to settle out, but eventually online services will fill the vacuum.

Tom

 

Well, i attempted to buy my first newspaper last week in over a decade, but was unable to. the 10th largest city in the US is now paperless.

despite printing volume of 3 times the normal run, getting a copy of the final edition of The Seattle Post-Intelliger proved to be a fruitless task.

its sad to see it now relished to an online format only. i personally have accessed The Daily Olympian online since the mid 90's (mostly because it was free and i was too cheap to pay for home delivery)

i have The Daily Olympian for the Challenger Shuttle, Desert Storm Invasion, etc... that is something that will be hard to substitute for the online version

 

.

 

ahhhh . . . the papyrus scroll . . . . now THOSE folks knew how to publish documents
But eventually that generation dies off, the next one forgets how the former generation did it ... and life goes on.

 

I will respectively disagree. Newspapers have been funded by selling ads for years now. The price you pay for printed paper covers the cost of distribution (the carriers get the majority of that money) and the cost of printing the paper. By eliminating the physical printed paper the company eliminates a huge cost while keeping the opportunity to sell ads. The key is getting companies to buy online ads for a online paper instead of radio spots, billboards, or TV ads. A newspaper is selling information to their customers. The delivery method is secondary to the content. A paper will good content will continue to attract customers.

If newspapers can continue to sell ads then they can continue to pay journalists to right content. Online delivery costs a tiny fraction of printing a physical paper.

Some papers won't make it but life will go one. That information void will be filled by another source of news. I personally can't stand local TV news and the local news section of the paper. It is simply a daily rundown of who was killed, raped, or robbed.

From an environmental standpoint the printed paper is hugely wasteful. Every day you get between 1/4 and 1 pound of paper delivered to your door and by the evening it is in the trash. Every newspaper reader is throwing away hundreds of pounds of paper per year. Yes, it can be recycled but there is a reason that recycle is the last word in: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

 

JSH,

"If newspapers can continue to sell ads then they can continue to pay journalists to right content. Online delivery costs a tiny fraction of printing a physical paper".


The point is they are NOT selling ads (and probably won't ever again sell them) ergo they can't pay journalists to write content. I agree that online content costs a fraction of the physical edition, but the fact is on line ad sales, and on line subscription fees are NOT paying the bills, and it is not clear if it ever will. I saw an interview on the street with people, and most would pay a minimal amount for "News" on line,, but one young women nailed it when she said, " I think the New York Times should be free on line! Why should I have to pay for it".

The key may indeed be to get advertisers to buy on line rather than radio/tv/print, but until it ca be shown that it is profitable to do so,, they won't, especially in the current economic climate.

As Dave in Olympia states,, we are used to getting content for "free". The idea of paying for it becomes an anathema. Would we pay to watch commercial TV if the ads weren't there? Answer is not really,, example PBS/NPR.

I agree that the Newspaper era was not the panacea we like to think of it as, but on balance, Newspapers have served as a good social balance,,, particularly to government.

Icarus

 

the online version of the Post_intelliger will employ 40 people from a staff of about 200. so there was a major cutback... now one thing i do notice as an advantage over printed paper, i can change the font size to match the fading capabilities of my eyesight

 

Newspapers are learning how to sell online ads:

Newspaper Ad Sales Up Online, Down in Print - ReadWriteWeb
MediaPost Publications Online Newspaper Ad Revenue Jumps 33% 09/01/2006
Online Advertising To Surpass Radio Spend By End of 2007
Online Advertising to Surpass Newspaper Advertising by 2011 - Search Marketing News Blog - Search Engine Watch (SEW)

I must be odd because I do pay to watch commercial free TV.

TV:
About the only broadcast TV I watch is PBS, specifically because it is not interrupted. I pay Blockbuster $15 a month for their online service that allows me to rent online. Most of our rentals are TV shows because they are commercial free and we can watch a season straight through. I've gotten to the point that I simply don't watch TV because I find the commercial interruptions so annoying. I also watch TV online.

Radio;
Again, the only broadcast stations I listen to are my local NPR stations. I even sent them $200 last year because quality commercial free content is important to me. For the rest of my radio listening I rely on Sirius, again a paid subscription.

So I pay about $42 a month for commercial free media.

 

JSH,

You, like me are indeed the exception,,, not the rule.

I too support my local NPR/PBS. I also have a Sirius subscription so that I can get NPR in the middle of nowhere.

But the reality is the number of people that actually donate to PBS/NPR is tiny compared to those that watch/listen to commercial media.

While online ads are indeed up,, the revenue from them is tiny compared to the what the print revenue was. Of course the overhead is much smaller with no print edition, but the reality is that it is still a tough nut to crack,,,economically.

Icarus

 

i do the same. pay like $19 something (i think its 16.95 a month plus tax) for netflix subscription and a bought a $100 box that hooks to TV that i can order from netflix on their instant view menu, uses my wi-fi to download TV shows that i can watch right away.

amazing how many shows i could not stand previously that i can now watch when the only difference is that there are no commercials