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July 27, 2013

This Just In

printdead.jpg

“Anyone who had seen print in recent years knew it wasn’t long for this world,” said media analyst Jeff Jarvis, pointing to the multiple setbacks that hindered print in recent years as it gradually wasted away. “I can remember a while back when I opened my Sunday newspaper for the first time in I don’t know how many weeks and there it was, looking so thin, so lifeless. After that, I realized it was only a matter of time.” - - America's Finest News Source

Posted by gerardvanderleun at July 27, 2013 12:13 PM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.

Your Say

Something else I noticed a while back when my aunt gave us newspapers to use for tinder in our wood stove: they're smaller too. Not just thinner, but the pages are smaller when folded out, like the page shrunk in the heat.

Of course the price keeps going up. If it weren't for the pre-boomer generation buying newspapers, I doubt they would sell 10 in a week.

Posted by: Christopher Taylor at July 27, 2013 2:03 PM

In the 70s in NYC, when I first began in typography, when type was set on blind keyboards and punched out on paper tape, when fonts were actually little film negatives mounted onto drums on Mergenthaler VIPs, when magazine text and books were developed on photographic paper called galleys and pasted up by hand, I used to borrow phototypositor fonts from a hot type shop up the street. Those guys were still setting hot type from pig iron and they told me that hot type was a craft that was here to stay, that "cold type" was just a passing fad. I guffawed, but he was half right. It was a passing fad. Imagine that. Print dead or dying. Just can't wrap my head around that.

Posted by: Nancy Moss at July 27, 2013 6:59 PM

Print will never die, but the big boom of it is over. Newspapers, magazines, fliers, that kind of thing are, for now, relics from a past era. There will always be a market for books, they're just going to be more expensive. A new book will become a luxury item once more.

Posted by: Christopher Taylor at July 27, 2013 8:05 PM

Print will never die, but the big boom of it is over.

Chiseling words onto stone tablets never died out, but there aren't many modern uses for it outside of a cemetery.

Posted by: Craig at July 27, 2013 9:03 PM

Anyone who uses old newspapers for wrapping packages has noticed the considerably smaller size for years now.

Posted by: pfsm at July 27, 2013 9:50 PM

It is an Onion article but I will follow along with the other comments.

Everything has gotten smaller not only the newspaper but every product. Sugar now comes in four pounds instead of five. Crackers are no longer 16oz but 12oz, etc. Everything is shrinking. I don't think print is dead, there is still use for it but newspapers should be dead.

A lot of local newspapers are no longer printed locally. The only thing that matters is the advertisements. There is a central printing location for many newspapers and then those papers are printed and shipped out to the local city from a central printing company. Your local paper died a long time ago.

Posted by: Potsie at July 28, 2013 5:36 AM

About the time papers went from hot to cold type was the time the big chains bought up the locals, creating the liberal/progressive rags.

Like anything else liberal, they're epic fails.

Posted by: Peccable at July 28, 2013 5:46 AM

Everything is shrinking.

Been to a fast food restaurant recently? Being back in the States for a while after more than a decade overseas, I've had to grab "road food" a few times, and it's hard for me to get used to the size of "medium" fries and soft drinks these days. Those "medium" portions are bigger than the "extra large" I would sometimes get years ago. No wonder America has an obesity problem.

Newspapers are definitely shrinking in size. "The Onion" article notwithstanding, I still buy them when I'm home, mostly on weekends, and usually just to keep up with what's happening around town. That, and the crossword/sudoku/cryptogram puzzles. Occasionally, I'll run across a good feature or investigative article, but that's become increasingly rare.

Posted by: waltj at July 28, 2013 6:55 AM

Chiseling words onto stone tablets never died out, but there aren't many modern uses for it outside of a cemetery.

Chiseling in stone was just writing, all that's different is the medium. There will never come a time when people won't want books or like them, only a time when they aren't as cheap and readily available as they were, say, 20 years ago.

No wonder America has an obesity problem.

Sigh. That old canard just won't ever die. People who have traveled into other countries really ought to know better, all those slender Germans and svelte Englishmen and all.

Posted by: Christopher Taylor at July 28, 2013 7:46 AM

What canard, Chris? Are you saying Americans are slimmer on average than Europeans? Not in my experience. It's true that fat Europeans seem to insist on wearing Speedos or going topless at the beach, but that's another issue.

Posted by: waltj at July 28, 2013 11:02 AM

The canard is that Americans are unusually and uniformly more overweight than the rest of the world. Even by the absurdly useless BMI model and the World Health Organization's data, the US is 9th in the world.

Posted by: Christopher Taylor at July 28, 2013 11:20 AM

Chris, I think I found the stats you're using (the infoplease website), and all of the eight countries ranked ahead of the US in obesity are places like Nauru, Tonga, and the Cook Islands--tiny Melanesian islands with equally tiny populations, restricted gene pools, and limited dietary choices. In other words, not a realistic comparison to the US. In "apples to apples" comparisons with other large, developed countries, we generally are listed as the fattest. Even if the BMI model is seriously flawed, which I agree it is, that's a number one ranking I could do without.

Posted by: waltj at July 28, 2013 2:21 PM

Kuwait is fatter than America on average, you figure that's an isolated Melanesian island? Mexico? And that's assuming their data is even remotely accurate.

Sorry, its a lie, top to bottom. America is not the fattest place on earth, Americans are not fat, and other nations have plenty of overweight people. Its just a convenient way for other nations to look down on America and mock it.

Posted by: Christopher Taylor at July 28, 2013 9:09 PM

Chris, I sincerely hope you're right, that all those really, really large people I've seen over the last few weeks since I've been back in the States have either been aberrations or foreign tourists. And if you live in a place where obesity is rare, like Ft. Benning or Camp Lejeune, good on ya. But I see plenty of it where I'm at.

Posted by: waltj at July 29, 2013 7:35 PM

Bonjour à tous, Je suis venu ici pour trouver des réponses, Je ne sais pas où demander ça, alors je vais demander ici. pour le moment j'utilise 4 outils pour faire ce travail et j'ai l'impression de répéter les informations sur le prochain outil pour chaque nouveau client. J'ai été la recherche de cet outil pendant un certain temps maintenant et je n'ai pas trouvé un qui fonctionne, s'il vous plaît laissez-moi savoir si on est là-bas.

Posted by: Mickey Gowler at December 24, 2013 8:03 AM

@ Alex, ce commentaire n'est probablement pas faite par un lecteur régulier, mais plutôt par un lecteur de passage qui a trébuché sur le poteau par accident.

Posted by: Melodie Parrack at December 26, 2013 5:33 PM

Hey my name is Dale. Je suis un joueur passionné avec un intérêt pour les ordinateurs. Merci de m'avoir invité. Ha ne sais pas quoi dire d'autre, si vous voulez en savoir plus venez de me poser.

Posted by: Raul Howton at March 12, 2014 6:30 PM

You are so gifted! Count yourself lucky

Posted by: Lannie Krolikowski at March 14, 2014 5:32 PM

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