Who Needs a Newspaper?

Fewer and fewer people, apparently:

Circulation continues to drop at U.S. newspapers.
Figures released Monday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations show average weekday circulation fell 8.7 percent in the six months that ended March 31, compared with the same period a year earlier.

Sunday circulation fell 6.5 percent.

Neither decline was as steep as the comparable one documented in the last reporting period. From April through September of last year, average weekday circulation dropped 10.6 percent and Sunday circulation fell 7.5 percent.

Even so, the top 25 newspapers in the country showed some huge losses.

I stopped taking a daily newspaper about 3 years ago. There wasn't anything in it that I didn't already know from other sources. And don't think newspaper websites provide more current info than the dead tree version - they often don't.

I'll give you an example from yesterday.  I happened to be monitoring the Orange County fire department frequencies last evening when I heard a call in Fullerton for a train versus pedestrian.  I posted an item at 6:31 pm.  Turns out it was a suicide and train traffic on the main BNSF east/west line had to be stopped while they cleaned up the mess.

I kept checking the Orange County Register website for information on the accident.  The OC Register is the main daily newspaper in Orange County and I figured they have a breaking news story there at some point.  As I write this at 9:40 am Tuesday morning the OC Register still doesn't have a story on the accident on its website.  It's useless.

I did finally get some information from an LA Times blog about 90 minutes after the crash.

HolyCoast.com - doing the job the mainstream media just won't do.