Loo.me

Read this post this morning by a former editor of the Chicago Times.  He writes: 

Several years ago, the Washington Post convened a series of focus groups to learn why most individuals under the age of 45 did not subscribe to the newspaper. It’s not that people didn’t like the Post, reported the American Journalism Review in an article describing the research project in 2005. The problem was that the respondents – many of whom happily consumed news on digital devices – drew the line at piles of old newspapers cluttering up their lives.  According to a Post executive quoted by the AJR, more than one respondent declared: “I don’t want that hulking thing in my house.” 

Totally true. I don’t want the actual paper showing up every day and creating another task for me to do.  I’d rather just read it somewhere and then forget about it.   A few other facts listed that i thought were interesting:

• Print newspaper readership ranged from 16% of forty-somethings to only 6% of those in their twenties (survey by Pew).  By contrast, Pew found that 30% of Americans aged 50-64 and 48% of those over the age of 65 had read a newspaper on the prior day.
• Pew found that only 29% of the American population read a newspaper in 2012, as compared with 56% in 1991 – the first time researchers asked the question.

The newspaper is totally dead.  People like me and my age are not reading it at all. The USA Today given to me at the hotel is totally ignored.  This is part of a general trend of things we like as stated by Mary Meeker in this 2012 report.  Such as: 

• We don’t want to own CDs, haul around books, buy cars, carry cash, or do our own chores  
• We will use smartphones to buy, borrow or steal media
• We will rent shared cars at home or book shared rooms when traveling
• We will hire people to buy groceries or cut the grass
• We will use apps from Starbuck’s and Target to pay for lattes or redeem coupons.  
• We prefer short-term gigs that allow us to arrange work around ours lives, rather than arrange their lives around our work. 

This isn’t 100% true for everyone, but it’s not not far off