Monday, December 15, 2008

Electronical editions of news papers

I grew up with getting a newspaper in the morning. And ever since I moved away from home I've always found the budget for a newspaper - and even during my university year in the US I had one of the major Swedish daily, Dagens Nyheter, as a "Sunday paper" only delivered to my Illinois campus (now this was before Internet time - can you believe how old I am! - not sure I would have taken on the expense had there been alternative ways during a stretched student budget). One of the first thing we did when coming here was to order the local morning paper and we've had it ever since. At first none of the local news made any sense - but now we read it pretty "fluently".

Unlike in Sweden the newspaper comes every day - always. There are no "no newspaper days" during holidays - it's always there - waiting in the garage drive for us to pick up in the morning.

I read Swedish newspaper online every day - even though some days I just quickly check the headlines (and for each year here - more and more news stories start to make less sense). When reading Dagens Nyheter online an offer to subsribe to the e-edition (pdf-format) of Dagens Nyheter - a special offer to people living abroad. You can try it for one month free - after that it's 1700 SEK a year.

It doesn't really make sense - if I'm going to read something online - it should be with links, videos, pictures - reading a whole paper in pdf-format just feels... I don't know... old fashioned? The newspaper is already "old news" by the time you read it in the morning (but I still like my paper) - reading it in a fixed pdf-format would just increase the "old news" feeling.

But then, reading the news today that a Detroit newspaper will, as the first, but probably not last, to end daily home delivery and only be available in newsstands on certain days - maybe this is the way things will go. Their refering to increased ink, paper and distrbution costs.

But it sure would take time for me to live without a morning paper if that day comes.

2 comments:

Annika said...

Jag provar också DN "i pappersformat" över nätet i en månad just nu. Fick första "numret" igår. Vet inte vad jag tycker, det är kul att se annonser och annat smått och gott som inte syns i nätupplagan, men...
Jag är inte helt säkert på att jag kommer att fortsätta när månaden är slut. Vi får se.
Jag kan inte tänka mig en morgon utan min papperstidning (Washington Post). Tycker det är så skönt att läsa tidningen medan jag äter frukost.
Men, nu ska vi se vart DN tar mig :-)

JaCal said...

Annika - intressant - ska bli kul att se vad du tycker. Jag har försökt klura på vad det är jag egentligen läser på de vanliga nätupplagorna - och det är ju mycket man inte längre "har nytta av".