News in print vs online

Each day more and more people get their news from the internet.  Most of these people no longer read newspapers, except perhaps online.

They are missing something.

When you read things online, you tend to see the headlines and big stories, easily missing the smaller news pieces.  I came to this realization while reading an actual newspaper, printed with ink on paper.  Of course, the main news stories were on the front page, but it’s the smaller items on the inside that are the most interesting.  Those smaller stories, sometimes no more than a paragraph, are scattered throughout the newspaper.  If they are even on the paper’s website, they are not easy to find.

When you open a fullsize newspaper, sometimes you are faced with a huge ad for some product, store or company.  Many times, on the same page, there are small news items with headlines that catch your eye.  One recent one concerned the mystery of the gravestone next to Lee Harvey Oswald’s cemetery plot.  The gravestone read “Nick Beef” and until recently, no one knew who this person was.  The article identified the owner of the plot, who is alive and thus was not buried there, and explained why he purchased the cemetery plot.  The article was interesting but I can’t imagine anyone having seen it while reading a newspaper online.

Another advantage of an actual newspaper is that you can pick it up at any time, read it for a minute or two, put it down and pick it up again later at the point you left off.  How often is that done with electronic news?

So, too, you can clip an article and save it.  Has anyone ever been found with an electronic news article folded in his wallet?

Of course, internet news is delivered much faster than a one day old newspaper. 

But sometimes it’s nice to slow down and smell the newsprint.