Showbizjobs Blog

The newspaper had become a prop at my breakfast table.  Something to reference, unfold, refold, scan and hide behind between my boys' pancake food fights.  Ex-smokers have said the same thing of cigarettes and smoking.

I just completed my first month of mornings without the daily newspaper.  No sobriety coin reward waiting, but it does make me think about our print brethren more.  For me, it started with the guilt of loading piles of parchment into the recycle bin each week, then an examination of the expense of it, the duplicity of the content, the clutter, and the sheer volume of ads.  I had zero alternative use for the discarded paper…I don’t have a parakeet or new puppy in the house and we don’t have a wood-burning fireplace.

Reverting to reading the news on my iPhone at the morning table was inevitable.  Plus I rarely read more than two articles in their entirety in the print version and for some reason I feel like a faster reader when the screen is only 2 inches wide.

Having made the leap away from paper, I feel more for the folks who work diligently to keep those institutions running.  They have a tough situation.  And many are still finding their way in the mobile news world…lots of room for improvement there.

But I do now look forward to picking-up a REAL paper when I’m at the coffee shop or at the airport.  A tactile treat when I’m away from home.  How strange.

BTW, does anyone have a killer iPhone news app?