Bless you, Gregg Easterbrook

[Inky_Wretch]

ESPN's TMQ includes an item about newspapers in his column today. It's mainly about how home printing might be an option for readers in the future, thanks to technological advances. But he ends the item with this ...

For all our grousing about what appears in the paper, right now American newspapers as a group are the very best they have ever been. Subscribe, or patronize the local newsbox. You will be sorry if the newspaper industry fades away. And don't say, "I'll just use the Internet for news." The vast majority of the news presented on the Internet originates as a newspaper story.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=easterbrook/091006&sportCat=nfl

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

I thought you were going to say he wrote short.

 

[Editude]

A do-it-yourself delivery at home might end the oddity in 2009 of half the papers in a night's run having a partial game story, seven hours before the paper hits most doorsteps.

 

[sportsed]

For all our grousing about what appears in the paper, right now American newspapers as a group are the very best they have ever been. Subscribe, or patronize the local newsbox. You will be sorry if the newspaper industry fades away. And don't say, "I'll just use the Internet for news." The vast majority of the news presented on the Internet originates as a newspaper story.

Sorry, but gotta call bullshirt on the contention that the "vast majority of news on the Internet originates as a newspaper story." Save for some major investigative project, I dare say there's nary a story that hasn't been available online before the newsprint is dry on the first edition. In fact, nimble news organizations should be on to the second day's angle before said newspaper hits the driveway at anyone's home.

 

[Inky_Wretch]

For all our grousing about what appears in the paper, right now American newspapers as a group are the very best they have ever been. Subscribe, or patronize the local newsbox. You will be sorry if the newspaper industry fades away. And don't say, "I'll just use the Internet for news." The vast majority of the news presented on the Internet originates as a newspaper story.

Sorry, but gotta call bullshirt on the contention that the "vast majority of news on the Internet originates as a newspaper story." Save for some major investigative project, I dare say there's nary a story that hasn't been available online before the newsprint is dry on the first edition. In fact, nimble news organizations should be on to the second day's angle before said newspaper hits the driveway at anyone's home.

I believe he was including newspaper sites in that statement. As we've all seen the most popular sites link like crazy to papers' sites. Get rid of newspapers (and their sites) and suddenly Deadspin and FARK and the rest are scrambling for content.

 

[playthrough]

For all our grousing about what appears in the paper, right now American newspapers as a group are the very best they have ever been. Subscribe, or patronize the local newsbox. You will be sorry if the newspaper industry fades away. And don't say, "I'll just use the Internet for news." The vast majority of the news presented on the Internet originates as a newspaper story.

Wow, that first sentence is one of the bigger piles of crap--which I wish wasn't--that I've read in a while.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

Lately, the motto of newspapers seems to be: "Stop me before I print again."

 

[Gene Parmesan]

Bless him? You must be confused.

That wasn't a sneeze... It was him calling someone 'a Jew'. No need to bless.