Sept.
15, 2009
Nostalgia for Newspaper Print Editions
By Claire S. Gould
As you might have noted from the
number of articles on the subject, the
current big topic of interest is the lack of
newspapers on campus.
That’s right, The New York Times, The
Boston Globe, and USA Today will no
longer be available for free on campus.
The pushback from students on this issue
has been astounding to me – mostly
because our generation is one of blogs,
Twitter, Facebook, texting, e-mail, e-
books…and the list goes on.
So why are we up in arms about losing
paper newspapers?
As several administrators, professors
and students noted, “what’s the big deal,
can’t you just read it online?”
I know we like considering ourselves
to be a “green” campus by becoming
more and more paperless. Now most
readings for courses are available on
Moodle (although ironically, most
professors still encourage students to
print articles out to bring to class).
But we want to feel a tangible
newspaper in our hands sometimes. With
all the reading we already do online,
along with all the texts and Facebook
message exchanges, there’s a sense of
contentment and connection that we feel
by reading the newspaper in the morning
over coffee and breakfast, rather than
just scanning the main headlines on our
BlackBerry’s Twitter feed or via text
alerts.
We want the black ink seeping off the
paper onto our hands.
We want the smell of newsprint and
ink.
There’s a sense of nostalgia and
comfort achieved by the mere
experience of opening up a physical
newspaper. (We feel such nostalgia as
well – see our “new” masthead with a
classic photo of Conn.)
Don’t get me wrong — I compulsively
read “NYTimes” news-breaking Twitter
updates, have the “global edition” of
their website bookmarked as my Firefox
home page, and enjoy reading some
articles and blogs online.
But it’s not the same. There’s no sense
of what was “above the fold” or “below
the fold” — or what articles were
deemed most important by the editorial
staff.
As Professor Borer, an avid advocate
for the college distributing the print
edition of the NY Times for free to
students, remarked, “On the web edition,
it’s really hard to gauge what the most
important articles are – and within just a
few clicks, you could find yourself
reading a blog.”
She, however, also reads the online
edition for updates.
It seems that the online and print
editions compliment each other perfectly
— I personally can’t imagine reading
just one or the other. Both are necessary
to understand the whole picture.
That being said, The College Voice (on
a much smaller scale of course), has
been experiencing some similar
discussions. With the gigantic jump in
the price of newsprint and the
consequent higher cost of publishing a
print edition, last semester,
administrators and staff suggested we
consider publishing our paper solely
online.
As you can obviously discern by
reading my editorial in newsprint, this
all-online leap never occurred.
I, along with most of our writers and
editors, argued that the mere act of
creating the layout of a print edition acts
as a real-world learning tool for students
interested in journalism.
Online, it’s just a matter of cut and
paste. Content would likely be more
sporadic and less likely to be under as
severe scrutiny by both writers and
editors.
We could quite easily turn into a blog
instead of a newspaper.
However, at the advent of our first
fully-fledged website in almost a decade,
we are thinking quite seriously about our
place in the online news world.
We’re up-to-date. We’ve got Twitter.
We’ve got a Facebook page.
But knowing the interdependence of
the online and print editions of a
newspaper first-hand, we won’t
compromise the advantage that the
newsprint version gives our readers: a
sense of what we (as an editorial staff)
deem most important.