This 100+ year-old newspaper has been around for a long time.
I realize my recent rants about the technification of libraries is a bit, er, pessimistic. (Is “technification” a word? I don’t know, but I like it, so it stays.) I really dislike whining and hand-wringing, and I was reminded of that when I read the essay to which I’m linking below.
The essay is about the supposed imminent demise of newspapers. Many in the print media decry the “replacement” of printed newspapers by digital media (much in the same way many booksellers –including me, at times — rail against the digitization of books). Jon Carroll, the author of the essay, has a contrarian view. When you read the essay, replace the word “newspapers” with the word “books”. When I did that, I felt a whole lot more optimistic about the survival of those other printed objects, books.
Click here to read the essay.
I stopped reading newspapers years ago. The Internet is supposed to be free. But almost all newspapers are now putting their articles online and expecting people to SUBSCRIBE to read them. I blogged about this recently in my 50 Greatest Books post.
http://bibliobiography.blogspot.com/2008/04/50-greatest-books-globe-and-mail.html
So if I have to pay, I would rather read my news on a website that does not charge me to read.