Why physical newspapers don’t correspond with the way I prefer to consume news
Up until this week, I‘d never owned a single copy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung before. In my family, we only read the local newspaper — Die Rheinpfalz — and that only if my mum brings it home from work. So for this week’s task, I decided to take the opportunity to buy the FAZ.
And what can I say, I don’t think I’ve missed out all that much. For one, I could have done without the (admittedly short) articles on the Kardashians and Justin Bieber, as well as a poorly researched article on the ‘novelty’ of parking discs used to reserve one’s place at Bochum’s university library, even though that’s common practice in other unis as well. But aside from that, I guess physical newspapers just generally aren’t for me. And here are some reasons why. (Spoiler: It all comes down to the Internet.)
First of all, the format is impractical. It’s not like you could carry it around on public transport or read it comfortably in bed. In fact, it barely fits on my desk, and only if my desk is tidy, which, well, is currently not the case. And when I actually attempt to read it, it’s a struggle and the pages usually end up out of order, looking battered or ripping. (In that regard, the experience sort of reminds me of using cling wrap, which tends to get crumpled up before I can actually use it, no matter what. Frustrating.)
But nevermind that, because in order to experience the struggle of reading it, you would first need to invest the time to actually sit down to do so. Because that’s the thing, reading a newspaper is not just reading a newspaper, it comes with a whole daily routine and a living standard. I personally can’t start my day by sitting down at the breakfast table with a hot cup of coffee to read the newspaper for half an hour or so. First of all, that’s because I don’t have a breakfast table. And secondly, there’s just not enough time in the morning. And if you’re busy during the day, there’s no point in postpone reading it till the next week. since the content is most relevant on release date and you probably would have heard about it all by then.
Reading news online, however, is quick, easy and more efficient. I always try to keep up with all the breaking news and have at least a basic understanding of the topics that are considered as most important at any given time. Then there’s the issues that I find particularly interesting and read up on more in-depth, using not just one particular news site, but reading any snippet I can find on it. For that sort of selective reading, online newspapers and the Internet in general are much more suitable. If you set an online newspaper as your front page, you‘ll automatically check the news every time you go on the Internet. All you have to do to access the most relevant information is scroll down the page, instead of having to flip through the entire newspaper. And if you’re looking for information on a particular topic or want to cross-reference sources, you simply use the site’s search function or your preferred search engine.
[A side note: Even though I’m of the opinion that the Internet is very convenient for informational reading, it might be interesting to note that this new way of ‘Häppchenlesen’, reading little bits and pieces of information on your phone and jumping from link to link in between, instead of reading one longer text at a time, is potentially harming our capability to concentrate on longer texts and digest more complex information. (Sources: 1, 2.)]
Another issue with newspapers is their price. I can’t justify paying €2.70 — in case of the Frankfurter Allgemeine — every day for something I can legally and conveniently access online for free. And if I did buy newspapers, I would feel obligated to read every article back to back in order not to feel like I wasted my money. But that would be tedious, since there’s the sports and finances parts, and again, it’s too time-consuming.
To be fair, newspapers have their merits as well. As we’ve seen from the statistics, newspapers play a much bigger role for older generations. My grandma, for example, owns neither a computer nor a smartphone. Instead, she has a newspaper subscription so she doesn’t have to rely solely on the news coverage on television. Due to the primarily elderly readership, it’s very likely that newspaper circulation is going to decline much more rapidly in the coming years, as access to technology is becoming the norm. It will be interesting to see which measures news websites will take to adapt to this decline in sales figures and how it’ll affect the availability of free professional news online.
