Newspapers are being hit hard by digital technology. Like record companies, who are still struggling, their business models have become increasingly obsolete and they’re forced to adapt to the changes that the Internet brings about.
There are lots of other ways to get news now. I don’t read newspapers anymore and I rarely watch television. I get news through my RSS reader, through Twitter, through Facebook, through friends. I’m subscribed to Google News Canada and the CBC’s Toronto and national feeds, but I also get a lot of news from blogs. Sometimes, these blogs focus on a niche, on providing expert analysis for a particular kind of news, like Techdirt. Sometimes I subscribe to aggregators, like Google News or LXer Linux News.
I love reading the Torontoist. I don’t always agree with everything they say, and there’s a lot of content that I’m not really interested in. But they provide a lot of local and timely news that’s unique, like their coverage on new Toronto street furniture designs today.
I love reading their headlines posts. They’ve got a unique style in the way they state the headlines through comedy, presenting the facts through the link. It’s almost Daily Show -ish in a way. It always makes me laugh, like this post from yesterday:
Tory MP Jason Kenney complained that Romeo Dallaire was overly harsh when Dallaire criticized the federal government’s handling of the Omar Khadr case. Kenney is a former general who is credited with using meagre resources to save the lives of over 20,000 people during the Rwandan genocide in the face of massive indifference from the west… no, wait, sorry, that was Dallaire. Jason Kenney is a lifetime party hack who didn’t finish his bachelor’s degree. See, they’re almost like twins!
I can just hear the newspaper tycoons lamenting at how journalism has been “devalued” and that this isn’t real journalism. Well, guess what? I like it and this is how I get my news.
