tylik

So I've been thinking a little about print journalism.

I live in Cleveland. I don't get a newspaper - I haven't for years, even when I still preferred paper books I sought out online print media. Oh, and I kind of hate the Cleveland Plain Dealer. I'm still not sure this is because of their content, or just that I really don't like their web site. Periodically, I try to like them. Or at least read them. And then I get stabby and go elsewhere.

Sometimes I read the Seattle Times. Now, I've never been a huge fan of the Seattle Times. But I liked the Seattle Times web site. Still... it's not my primary news source. It's more something I check more often than not because it doesn't entirely suck and it's nice to see what's going on in the old town.

So, the Seattle Times is looking to put up some kind of paywall. And I find myself conflicted. Because really, I just don't read them enough to justify buying their subscription. And yet... I'm pretty willing to pay for my news. For all my love of blogs, and my tendency to get a lot of my news from twitter, I value old fashioned print journalism (well, except the paper part.) Citizen journalism is great, professional journalism - especially local professional journalism - still has something to offer. I think. Citizen journalism is also pretty random, and I'm happy to pay for some consistency. (Yeah, there are problems. Still.)

I'm happy to throw my subscription dollars into the jar... I just want it to be for what I actually read.

And so I got to thinking. See, the Seattle Times subscription is pretty equivalent to the amount I give to public radio every year. Now... I listen to public radio a lot more than I read the Seattle Times. (And I adore Public Radio. Sorry, Seattle Times. You just don't rate.) But maybe not so much more than I read online news.

Now, I give to my local NPR station, WCPN in my case. I figure my local NPR station needs me most. But, in fact, I listen to radio in ways not entirely dissimilar to how I read news online. I have a bunch of statiosn bookmarked, and while I do listen to my local station for at least some of the time most days (because I do like getting some local news and they generally don't make me stabby) I listen to a number of other NPR stations, and BBC stations, and random world music stations out of Turkey, more or less as the whim takes me. I also randomly search for stations playing programs I particular want to hear, pull down podcasts, and whatever. (There was in fact a period where I wondered if I had become the woman without a public radio station. But when I thought about how most of the other stations I listened to were for affluent coastal cities with far bigger budgets, well, public radio in Cleveland seemed like a more pressing concern.) (Also, suggestions for other English language international radio would be great.)

So this kind of leads me to my ideal model of news on the web:

I'm still expecting that I'm going to get at least half my news through links off twitter, aggregation sites, and the like. I hope that most sites allow infrequently visitors to see their content for free. Of course, a lot of those linked are already weighted towards the bloggers and local independents and the like.

Meanwhile... I'd like to pick one local paper to be my home paper. I'm not sure which one, but that's not the immediate issue. What I would like to see is a federation of papers with reciprical authentication. Basically, once you've bought your subscription to Hometown News, you can freely browse most other newspapers in the country, say. Because honestly? I want to give regional print journalism money. I want to know that there is someone covering the local city council, and who actually gives a damn who is elected to the local school board. (I mean, look what happened with the Seattle School board!) But I don't want to be locked into only reading a single paper, either. The idea of news disappearing behind paywalls, and paying in part to pick a single source sounds awful.

I doubt the New York Times would be on board for it. That's okay. I can live without them. (Or, um, flush my cookies from time to time.)

Thoughts? I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but I'm sure it would benefit from a good dialectic and/or fleshing out.

(Note, I'm well aware that there are a lot of other problems with traditional print media. And yes, I'm far more interested in the independently owned papers. I mean, one can easily