Monday, March 02, 2009

St Paul Pioneer Press listed on the next 10 to die list

My home town paper slips onto the list next to biggies like the SF Chronicle and the LA Times ...

The Next 9 Newspapers To Die

...St. Paul Pioneer Press – Circulation: 184,973 (3% decrease since 2007)...

Minneapolis, our sister city, has the Star Tribune. It's bankrupt of course, but for the moment it only has to outlive the Pioneer Press.

Both papers are a shadow of their former selves.

In my Canadian childhood we had record players, tape recorders, carbon paper, broadcast ad-supported television, VCRs, pay phones, pay toilets (!) and I delivered 3 different varieties of heavy newspaper by bicycle (I must have been stronger than I remember).

All anachronisms (nobody misses the pay toilets).

It's absurd to schlep newsprint from printer to doorstep. I personally won't miss the end of the newspaper.

The trick will be to kill the newspaper but, somehow, preserve the business of written news.

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