Something major happened in my life this May. Something I never
thought would and I am still at times struggling with this new reality. I
stopped my subscription of all the newspapers! Well not all of them. I retained
one – Times of India.
Why was TOI the chosen one? For one, the wife would once in
a while rustle through Delhi Times catching up with all the Bollywood gossip.
And second, I still had withdrawal symptoms that the familiar rustle could take
care of in case of severe depression.
What’s so earth shattering about someone stopping his news
paper subscription! The global news paper industry with the exception of a few
countries like India is grappling with this phenomenon every day.
It becomes significant when you consider that a) I am on the
wrong side of fifty b) that it is habit which maybe is more than forty years
old c) news paper subscriptions do not create any dent in your pocket and
therefore is not a significant saving d) I read at least four news papers every
day and e) when I am adopting a new way of accessing news – digital!
The change did not happen overnight. It has been quite some time
that I have been switching between the virtual and real world while accessing
news. It has taken me much longer to give up the familiar ‘thump’ of the
newspapers landing on my balcony where the vendor expertly throws it every
morning and untying the band and staring at the headlined news of events that
happened late last night as the world slept. And then sitting with my favourite
cuppa and trawling through the rest of the paper.
Here is what made me want to change:
- I have much better access to news via gadgets that fit so conveniently in my pocket
- I have a choice of what kind of ‘news’ I want to read and can use the services of a news aggregator which makes it so much easier to separate the wanted from the unwanted
- I can easily clip and save information that I cannot consume right now but can have easy access some times in the future
- I have the ability to access news as it happens
- Any significant information that is useful to someone in my network can be instantaneously sent across to him
- Even after going through the more news sources now than before, I feel I am managing my morning time much better
- Archived copies can be accessed easily
- I make a small contribution to the environment
How has my experience been in the last few months? To be
honest, I am not sure if am over the old habit as yet. The reason being that
there is a huge difference between newspapers and how they manage their digital
products. I somehow prefer the ones that convert the item of your choice into a
PDF file. That way, the news and graphics stay as organized as they were in the
actual paper. I also find that some of the images, especially data, are of such
poor quality that you really cannot read the information.
It is time that news paper publishers looked very seriously
at digital products and the user experience. The younger people, who are the
bulk of the population today and would also be the bulk of the consuming class,
are more comfortable in a digital environment. And as per my own experience they
are not used to reading print versions of newspapers, and have to be lured to
newer forms of news access. Without this audience, the publishers stand to
loose a large portion of their advertising revenue which is the mainstay of
this business. That to me does not make business sense.
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