Although I don’t consider myself a ‘news’ junkie, I do consume a fair amount of the stuff. However, starting today (or perhaps tomorrow – I forget when my subscription runs out) home delivery of my local news paper – The Keene Sentinel will stop. I’m not renewing my subscription.
I’ve taken the Sentinel ever since I moved to Keene, NH – which is now pushing 18 years. Before that I took the local news where ever I was living – Sunnyvale and LA, California and before that Knoxville, TN. The Sentinel was a nice change from those larger metro papers. I could consume it in less than 30 minutes and it had a nice mix of local, national and regional as well as sports, comics, puzzles, classifieds, etc. When they started a Sunday edition, I took that too.
It’s not that the paper’s gone down hill, lost it’s important coverage or local importance. What’s happened is my reading habits have changed – from primarily physical (I don’t really watch much TV news) to mostly digital and in particular web-based syndicated news feeds.
Several years ago I started using a service called Netvibes which allows each user to construct web based pages that display different types of information from various online data suppliers, e.g. gmail, Facebook, news feeds, blogs, and the like. Primarily I use their RSS/ATOM feed system to grab web-based syndicated news from national, regional and local sources as well as syndicated technical, lifestyle, book reviews/events, classified and yes, even comics and bring them all together in one spot. In some cases I’ve had to create RSS feeds from raw web pages using services such as Feed43 and Yahoo! Pipes.
At this point my news consumption is primarily on-line via my Netvibes based custom news portal. Yes, having the technical understand of how to leverage web based content and how to create news feeds has helped, but eventually my feeling is that everyone will be crafting their own “newspaper” using feed syndication – even if newspapers and other media outlets start erecting pay-walls for their content.
I’m perfectly happy to consume news and information from sites that offer it for free, including my local paper. But if I have to pay for it I will so long as it’s worth paying for. If news outlets are simply repackaging AP stories, that’s not worth paying for. Original content that’s meaningful and important to me I’ll gladly pay for. Until then I’ll soak up the free stuff as long as it persists.
For now, however, the only thing that I’ll miss about the printed edition of my local paper is the lack of wood stove starting material.
Update: Seems I’m not alone – I wrote this post before I read the article. Coincident?
