Recently there's been a lot of suggestion in the media about online newspaper content no longer being free in the future, with viewers charged to look at the latest stories. Personally I can't see how this is at all fair or sensible - why should you pay for something you can't even physically hold in your hand? For me, a large part of reading newspapers is about finding articles you otherwise would not have read, and also cutting out images or text that is inspiring; this would certainly not be achievable with online content. I would begrudge paying to view a website, then having to copy and paste or screenshot everything I wished to salvage, before printing it out at yet more cost. There is also something very annoying about having to view endless webpages of stark white electronic backgrounds - I like the dull cream pages of a newspaper and the smell and feel of it.
With blogging, there is a completely different experience, with unlimited journalistic possibilities and no desperate need for payment (not here, anyway) in order to eke out a return for your readership. Maybe, instead of putting a consumer spin on the online paper, it should just be left as a free resource and an important archiving tool -I have definitely found online papers useful for my degree, as it gives me access to articles I never could have otherwise read. Yet if I was charged for the privilege, I would not be inclined to use the website again.
I think that, once you start putting a price on information and totally remove the tactile qualities of a newspaper, technology has gone too far.
I wonder if you'd consider following:
ReplyDeletehttp://alan-whiteman.blogspot.com/
who writes a music news blog. It's packed with lots of stuff and he keeps up to date, and also I'm on a bet to get his following up to dizzying heights. It's a pity about his spelling but you can't have evreything. Love, Alec