Last year I started reading a physical newspaper

A newspaper has a start and an end. That&#x27;s as simple as it needs to be for me to move on with my day.<p>On the internet, the news is endless and the information overload constant. Set aside social media. I get a headache just reading an average article on a news website.<p>A paragraph will have multiple links, which is incredibly distracting on its own. But that is compounded by the fact that paragraphs themselves are broken up by a &quot;Related Articles&quot; block of links.<p>Add in a dynamic sidebar with the latest stories, a live stock ticker in the top corner, a banner showing &quot;breaking news&quot;, and it&#x27;s no wonder people might pick up a newspaper again.

I started working for a newspaper just after 2007-08 hit and hastened the decline of the already struggling industry.<p>One day, after working diligently on the job for a few months, I pitched my editor an idea for an online-only story with some interesting multimedia elements. He told me I could definitely work on that story “on my own time.” I was an hourly employee so I asked him to clarify if he wanted me to schedule the work around the other stories I was working on at the time. He laughed and told me that he couldn’t justify paying me for any project meant only for the website. I was welcome to work on the story and publish it on my own time of course.<p>I decided to leave the publication and the overall newspaper industry that day. I still miss the feeling of working in a buzzing newsroom, there’s just nothing like it. Similar to the author, I’m nostalgic for the days when the news cycle was limited by time and column inches.<p>I don’t think we’re ever going back to anything resembling the heyday of newspaper publishing. If you’re lucky enough to live in an area where halfway decent reporting happens then maybe subscribing to the print edition makes sense. Unfortunately I am not so lucky. I read magazines for my “news” and try not to check the headlines too often on my phone.<p>I grew up with a morning and afternoon daily. I never knew how good I had it. Two comics sections! News stories with same day updates! Imagine such a wonder…

YMMV.<p>The local daily (or Sunday) paper in many parts of the US is ... simply unreadable.<p>As in: there&#x27;s no news in it, the writing that exists is poor, the articles are filler and largely newswire or (by all appearances) bot-written.<p>There are pitifully few counterexamples, and if your local region has a paper that&#x27;s actually managing to put out a worthwhile product (if not exactly thriving), well, count your blessings.<p>In Chicago, the local NPR affiliate just announced an exploration to acquire one of the city&#x27;s two remaining daily general newspapers and operate it as part of a non-profit news organisation:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.robertfeder.com&#x2F;2021&#x2F;09&#x2F;30&#x2F;chicago-public-media-acquire-sun-times-merger-plan-wbez&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.robertfeder.com&#x2F;2021&#x2F;09&#x2F;30&#x2F;chicago-public-media-...</a><p>(Chicago&#x27;s other daily, the much-suffering, badly-TRONC&#x27;d <i>Tribune</i>, was scooped by virtually everyone on this and barely managed to copy and paste WBEZ&#x27;s press release the next morning. Though it managed to report on yet another senior editor leaving, the 40th or so editorial staffer to do so since the paper was bought by a venture-capital leech in May.)<p>I see that as a likely development in other cities as well --- perhaps KQED &#x2F; Northern California Public Media picking up the SF Chronicle or Examiner, for example.<p>Otherwise, I really see no path forward for print.<p>Yes, there&#x27;s some benefit in having a Very Finite News Feed, and being able to bundle up an entire day&#x27;s articles and set them on the recycling bin when done. But really, there&#x27;s simply no there here any more.

&gt; <i>(From the article) I found that having a physical paper show up at my door made me more likely to read it.</i><p>So true. I had the same experience with magazines. Growing up, I would have a magazine in my hand all the time. Somewhere in between, I moved on to digital versions, but it just hasn&#x27;t been the same experience. I also feel I retain information much better given that a physical copy has fewer distractions compared to 10 open tabs and banners and snippets and what not while reading online. I haven&#x27;t bought a physical magazine in quite some time, maybe it is time to try them again.

There are unfortunately not too many physical newspapers in circulation, greatly limiting your choice. Conversely you can make your feed into a physical printed form; there was a thing called the Little Printer back in 2012, a thermal printer that prints an aggregated feed of news and social activities into a sort of mini newspaper. The company had shut down by now, but see [1] for the open-sourced version.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tinyprinter.club&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tinyprinter.club&#x2F;</a>

I have been told if you limit yourself to reading newspapers that are a week old for awhile, you will quit reading newspapers all together.

I am a 20 something and I was subscribed to the local paper for daily news. It was great! The biggest gift is that you can scan most of the newspaper in the morning, get a sense of the big news of the day, and you never felt a &quot;need&quot; to find out more. Like I tend to do when reading news on the internet.<p>Unfortunately, the local paper gave me no way to unbundle the weekend editions from my subscription - an enormous pile of advertisements containing almost no news!

What I like about a physical newspaper is that there is a completeness to it. I scan 2 or 3 sections, I know I have looked at everything, I am done. In an online website of a newspaper, there is no sense of which day the newsarticle is from unless you click on it, and it is easy to miss &quot;minor articles&quot; which are often of your interest, if not for the general readership.

I’ve been reading daily newspapers for years now. Reading the news on a large paper sheet is just so much more pleasant than reading it on a small phone screen.

Sadly the newspaper industry will never be restored. I somewhat adapted my information flow towards ultra limited and clean experience. My usual daily routine limits my news access to two cycles, early (5:30 - 6:00 AM) and late (18:00 - 18:30).<p>Yeas ago in search on how to limit the affect of &quot;design trends&quot; over my design process I started using Reeder, a RSS app for MacOS. Paired with adequate font it was a speedy and minimalist way to consume information.<p>Today I practically live half of my workday in Emacs, taking notes (org mode is a bliss) and making quick code edits (VS Code is still my favorite for long sessions) so naturally Elfeed is my news interface.<p>The limitation of news access for me is working perfectly. I cannot imagine going back to doom-scrolling on my phone or desktop.

Your local library may allow you to read the newspaper for free and in the same layout as the print issue.

The biggest reason newsprint is not going to disappear isn&#x27;t even in the article.<p>Newspapers aren&#x27;t just about news. They&#x27;re about gossip, infamy, and fame.<p>Nobody is truly famous until their name and picture has been splashed across the daily newspapers.<p>Without newspapers, there would be no universal concept of who is famous, and who is not. And everybody needs to know who is famous. That&#x27;s why newspapers are always going to be around.

Started a WSJ subscription when the pandemic started. No more doom-scrolling. Life is good.<p>Also, reading the newspaper becomes a fun ritual.<p>I don&#x27;t _need_ to know when something happens the same day. I sometimes read the paper a day late, and that&#x27;s okay.<p>The WSJ weekend edition has an excellent &quot;Book review&quot; section that I look forward to.<p>Highly recommend a print paper, even if you pick a different one.

This has been my standard advice for a while:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;page=0&amp;prefix=false&amp;query=dionidium%20sunday%20edition&amp;sort=byPopularity&amp;type=comment" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;page=0&amp;prefix=false&amp;qu...</a>

Reading the news is bad, whether digital or printed. Try going without for a quarter.

Semi-related: I am a devotee to the New York Times’ “Replica Edition,” an exact reproduction of the daily printed paper.<p>On a nice big iPad pro, you’re making almost no compromises between website disarray or creating paper waste.

Every Christmas holidays, I buy all the national and local papers and read them every day. By the end of the holiday period, it reminds me why I don&#x27;t bother reading newspapers throughout the year.

Can you still get physical newspapers delivered?<p>I read The Economist on paper each week, but that&#x27;s it for paper-based news.

for me, I just recently got a free 4 week subscription to the paper, to be honest, I had read the news in the paper already, about the only thing I&#x27;ve done is the sudoku.

I do the same, although my “physical newspaper” is my RSS Reader. I look forward every morning spending 60-90 minutes reading the articles that interest me, while drinking coffee.