Can I Live Without a Newspaper?

This week, our beloved Tracy Press announced it would deliver the paper once a week. Friday. That news drove home the fact that, sadly, print newspapers are quickly going the way of the 8 track tape, tubes, the Edsel, and ISDN videoconferencing…

Sunny (our 10 year old yellow lab) and I get up in the morning. Sunny rushes to the door to experience the highlight of his life….getting the paper, a treat,  and sitting with “Dad” while I read the paper.

This morning, I realized this could (hmmmm, will) all go away.  And this sad occurrence is happening MUCH faster than I thought it would. I actually figured I’d be long gone (and Sunny too) before newspapers left our lives. But now, it looks like Sunny may actually see that day (and me too).

So sad.

What can I do?  What can Sunny do? What would life be like without our daily newspaper?

I decided to find out.

After I was done reading both the Tracy Press and the Stockton Record, I grabbed Kristen’s iPod Touch. If you read my recent paradigm blog entry, we now have superb wireless connectivity in the backyard since I moved the wireless hub near the big HDTV in the Family Room.

I increased the brightness of the screen, sat on the lounge chair facing the pool, and fired up the iPod (Note: I do not own an iPod, and I rarely use one).  That may change.

I went to TracyPress.com. Hmmm, not so good. The articles / headlines were not mobile friendly, and besides that…..they were the same old news that was there yesterday. Not good. Me to TP:  If print is dying, you should pay a LOT more attention to your online…starting NOW.

I went to Recordnet.com and they at least had a mobile friendly web site. But, the news there was very sparse. Not good.  Ditto my advice to you.

I went to CNN.com and found a list of all the news, sports (I checked the Giants score), entertainment, etc. stories. The initial list was not pretty (just a list of headlines), but, clicking on a headline opened up the entire story with pictures, graphs, etc. Very nice. Flash does not work on the iPod.

Ditto at CBSNews.com. Very nice, lots of information on all topics. I searched for the stock price of Radvision (RVSN, which I bought at $50.00). Arrrghhh…

I then went to my iGoogle account. Again, it was ugly, that is simply listing the topics. I went into my “Top Stories” and dug deeper to read a couple of full articles, very nice. I then went to my “Reader” and found more articles to read.  Cool.

I then took the iPod on the Throne….. and that is when it was taken away from me….ewww, were Kristen’s exact words.  However, before it disappeared I went to Popular Science (very cool) and was going to try Better Homes & Gardens, Runners World, Hawaii, and a few others to see if this could be reading replacement for mags while there….I’ll try again some other time.

Conclusion

When the newspapers finally stop delivery (I hate to say this, but Sunny may not yet be 11), we will have saved a few newspapers wrapped in rubber bands for Sunny to get in the morning. The next dog will not know the joys of fetching the newspaper in the morning….we will have to think of something else for him (yes…we like male dogs for some strange reason) to do.

As for me….I found out today that I can live without the newspaper just fine. I could use a bigger screen (iPad?), but, that is the only current need. Heck, while I was reading the iPod…I also checked the weather (real time temperature), and the time!  I could have checked my email and Facebook and sent a Tweet….but, it is SATURDAY after all and I shut down on the weekends.  If you believe that, wanna buy some ocean front property in Arizona?

So goodbye print newspapers…bring on change!