Thanks to the Willamette Week tipping me off to the fact the Oregonian would cease seven-day publishing, I've had since January to adjust to the fact I will not be whipping through my newspaper every morning. I'll still be reading, most likely on my phone, but it just won't be the same.
I'm helping one of the summer school teachers do a lesson on newspapers. (Not my choice for reading camp as I think a more exciting topic might spark non/low readers who are about 4th grade level students). It is quite interesting because none of them have ever lived in a home that subscribed to a newspaper. They don't even know what a headline is! Where you and I grew up in 7 day subscriber homes where reading the paper was a distinctive part of the day. I knew the sections of the paper and the basic outline of its formatting at a pretty young age. I wonder if it is worth our teaching time? Will these children ever subscribe? What do you think?
ReplyDeleteYour comment makes me even sadder. I deliver the quarterly neighborhood newspaper and I do it early in the morning, so I see how few people subscribe to the physical paper. But I hadn't thought through to the children. They will probably have an entirely different categorization of how news is distributed. If someone tells me about a news story, I could predict which section it's in, but with web sites/mobile applications, content is delivered in a very different jumble. I think "taking in the news" will also not be an activity that they sit down and do, like I have specific times when I read the newspaper, but something they dip in and out of throughout the day.
ReplyDeleteIt's a brand new day for news organizations, that's for sure. And I'm not too thrilled.