Saturday, February 20, 2010

Newspapers are boring

I stopped subscribing to the NYT when I moved to CA over two years ago. Today, flying SFO->PHL, I bought a copy at the airport newsstand, just to recall the experience. I spent some 90 minutes on it during the flight, but I didn't enjoy it. The experience was the same that made me give up the NYT in print: slow, too much nondescript conventional wisdom, a structure that lacks vitality and the ability to make important information stick. In contrast, the book I am reading, From Eternity to Here, is full of interesting stuff, both main points and asides. The problems with newspapers are attributed to technology changes, but the real cause seems to me that they no longer meet the needs of the day, the form is stale for a culture where so much is happening so fast with all sorts of overt and implied connections.

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