Last Sunday I did something quite strange.
I bought newspapers.
I dined out myself on that day because the clan were all at the young scientist in Dublin.
I hate eating alone so I bought some company.
I had forgotten the joy of spreading out the Sunday newspapers and having an a la carte selection of commentators, features and news to suit my mood.
I truly can’t remember that last time I did this. It brought home to me how online I have become and I’m clearly not the only one.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-16551244
How did my paperless Sunday creep up on me?
Today I’m in London at a meeting of the NUJ’s New Media Industrial Council.
Late last year I gave a talk on the digital future to a branch of the NUJ in Ireland.
They were all aware that the trade they had joined by various routes twenty or more years ago is dying.
I know what I am doing here now is part of the future.
My Google Analytics tell me that this site has more readers than the Sunday Herald and Scotland on Sunday combined.
My two Sunday papers, one Irish on British, cost me over €5.00.
I know from my NUJ activity that costs are being savagely cut in every newspaper.
Many News Desks are virtually on a skeleton staff.
At the same time the price of the product is being raised as the quality is screwed down by the tyranny of the bean counters.
The print sector seems to be in a tail spin and no one has worked out how to make online editions self-financing let alone profitable.
This economic change is being driven by the new media revolution.
This speech by Professor Roy Greenslade in The NUJ’s Irish conference last year is worth another listen.
http://www.nuj.org.uk/files/NewMediaRoy.mp3
In my overnight bag is a small grey device called a Kindle with hundreds of books on it.
This technology is wonderful, liberating, exhilarating, but I grew up with books and newspapers.
I still remember the thrill of my first by-line, an opinion piece in the Scotsman, a quarter of a century ago.
I live with thousands of books they’re old friends. Sometimes I pick one up and find margin note I made before my children were thought of. Often I whoop at the naiveté of a scribbled observation. Occasionally I’m almost impressed at my apparent prescience when I was in my twenties. Almost…
A friend recently told me that she had found some love letters from her grandfather to her grandmother in an attic.
Real treasure.
What will future generations find in their attics?
Text messages?
I still buy cards and sit down and write my thoughts on them to and then send them to people who mean a lot to me.
Then next day or so the people at An Post do the business and there is something tangible from me to another.
I know this would never occur to any of my teenage children.
They have Facebook.
I don’t think we need to take to the woods like Guy Montague and memorise books, writing will survive, journalism will survive, but with all of this information instantly available, I do wonder what lines of poetry or scenes from literature will future generations store in their heads as their secret treasures?
PaulMc
None of my books have ever ran out of power. If I lose a book, I’ve lost a book, not 1000.
I’ll still get an e-reader when the technology improves a bit more though. Contrary, ME? Never!
January 17, 2012 at 10:31 pm
john mclaughlin
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017j25x this is a brilliant doc.. david carr is rivetting
January 17, 2012 at 10:12 pm
frankiethebear
books are far more than repositories of history and information, books are real, man made and last, even if your hard drive does fail. Now, there’s a question. If your hard drive does fail, where do you find out how to fix it? From a bloody book! You can’t get the smell of a new book from a kindle or a phone, not even the newest iphone no matter what bloody app it has!
nice reference to Ray Bradbury, by the way. My worst horror movie!
January 17, 2012 at 7:15 pm
Edward McCandless
I read with interest the word journalism is frequently
Used in your blogs Phil. in Glasgow I we
Refer to them as sports reporters.with poor eye sight
Cowards liars irritating creeps.
January 17, 2012 at 4:32 pm
redlandscelt
Great post, Phil. The world has been forever changed by technology, some for the better, but certainly (in some cases) for the worse. As I live in the vicinity of Ray Bradbury, and thus was fortunate enough to get a signed copy of “Dandelion Wine” signed by Mr. Bradbury, the title of your post reminded me of the joy of the personal connection you only get from real pen to real paper.
January 17, 2012 at 12:06 pm
C.O'D
I disagree Fra. The nature of the ‘archiving’ and perhaps even archaeology may change. There will be less digging with trowels and spades and more with keyboards. No doubt it will be even more laborious but there is so much more information out there now that social hitory if anything may well change the recording of ‘big’ history. We will have a tonne of references to what ordinary people were thinking about big events.
In fact I think the biggest challenge to real history might come from the increasingly powerful medium of the advertisers who do more than any other entity to shape opinion and social attitudes – unfortunately.
I do think it would be a great idea if people were recording some of the differing opinions raised on various web pages. There will be great books to be written on politics and football in partcular – all documented on ‘tinterweb.
January 17, 2012 at 11:54 am
Gary
Very interesting read Phil. My Dad who is a retired sports journalist at the Glasgow Evening Times is the opposite. He was in the newspaper trade for near on 50 years, basically all his working life and still buys about 4 newspapers a day. In this age of recycling the “paper only” bin is constantly full to the brim halfway through the week.
He cannot understand my reasoning, having not bought any newspapers for the last 15 years despite having a keen interest in sport and politics. He constantly asks how I get my news on world events and my reply is commonly “much quicker than you do” with a smiling face. Given the choice of so many free media outlets it’s simpler and faster to get current affairs on line and as long as you don’t limit yourself to one media source you are still allowed to form your own opinions on today’s ned stories.
I like you probably, remember when my Dad would come home with the equivalent of today’s laptop bag only inside it was a rusty old Olivetti typewriter. He taught me to touch type when I was around 8 years old on it. This was extremely difficult as you needed the strength of an ox to actually see a letter appear on the paper as well as the fact that the letters on each key had been worn away by years of
use. I still have that old Olivetti in it’s original zip up case.
As well as that we used to attend football games together, often at Firhill, Cappielow, Clydebank and Dumbarton. On a freezing day in December it wasn’t much fun but by the age of 11 I could read my Dads shorthand and would often be used as a runner every 20 minutes or so to go underneath the main stands and use the Press phone to phone over his copy so it could make the Pink Times. Eventually I was doing this for the Daily Record as well and was earning a few bob in the process. It was always great to be included and even the managers such as Craig Brown at Clyde and Bertie Auld at Partick Thistle always allowed me in the office for cokes and a pie afterwards.
Players were approachable too such as Alan and John Hansen, Alan Rough, Roy Baines , Danny McGrain and Johnny Doyle – real heroes who would take time to even have a kickabout with you in the dressing room corridor.
Nowadays Journalists go to college, plug in their laptops, use mobile phones and dictaphones to record every spoken word. A concept my Dad can’t fathom out at all. He feels there is very little real investigative journalism these days and many mainstream guys get spoon fed their stories. A point we are in agreement about yet he continues to grip onto the overpriced piece of paper. I suppose it comes down to what you are used to and brought up with
Times change, we move on and while your right in saying what will we have in the future, I have my Dads Bylines, his typewriter, his knowledge and an awful lot of very happy memories. Things that should never be underestimated.
Sniper.
January 17, 2012 at 11:31 am
Thekwizatshaderach
IV. A Death by Water
Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth,
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
T.S Eliot
January 17, 2012 at 11:29 am
david mckendrick
There is such a conflict for all of us who love one form of media above others.Yesterday I got a copy og Gil Scott Heron’s memoir sent to me by Jamie Byng at canongate books. I love books always have and my Christmas was the most special so far as I watched my tow oldest girls reading their books. I am writing this comment in a library another of my facvourite places we cannot deny technology but us “Oldies” have a responsibility to our preferred media. I’m all for the future but the past should never be seen as “bad” becasue it is old, we need to try to preserve books and records they mean too much to be dumped for Kindles’s and ipads.
Interestingly just before I read this piece I was watching Ian Hislop on Levenson he was arguing that he gets so angry about politicians who do “bad” becasue he believes so much in their power to do “good” somehere in there is a lesson for all of us.
January 17, 2012 at 11:09 am
Stephen Sutton
A very interesting piece & subject Phil.
Journalism is changing fast, and there are a certain amount of people in your profession who are still not willing to welcome it with open arms.
I listened to last nights SSB podcast this morning & I cringe everytime I hear a certain Scottish sports journalist ignore/deny the blogging or social media as a medium for reporting.
Of course there are those who have grasped this new medium and use it, take some stick at the same time, but they have accepted it for what it is.
Im not a journalist, but its great to know that the NUJ is making moves to inform & educate all who need to know, lets hope they welcome it.
Freedom of speech is a right for us all, even you.
January 17, 2012 at 10:59 am
Fra Stone
Its the end of social history, ‘big’ history will always be recorded, but the ordinary citizens history will be lost, no more love letters, no more interaction with our fellow citizens through letters and postcards, so none of our day to day lives and thoughts will be there for our grandchildren and great grandchildren
January 17, 2012 at 10:52 am