I hear from so many people that they can’t live without their print newspaper and morning coffee that I’m often tempted to remind them it’s technically possible to drink coffee while reading the news on your iPad.
The declining relevance of print is top of mind this morning as The New York Times failed to get the White House Correspondents Dinner shooting into its dead-tree edition. Lest you think this is a Boston delivery problem, it’s also not in the replica edition. Needless to say, it’s all over the Times homepage, and it probably found its way into the late city editions as well.
The (deservedly) much-maligned Washington Post managed to go big with the shooting in its print edition. You might say that’s a function of being the hometown paper, but it’s really not. It’s a function of press times.
The Boston Globe leads its print edition with the shooting, alongside the firing of Red Sox manager Alex Cora.
No excuses for the Los Angeles Times, which is three hours behind the East Coast, meaning that the incident took place around 5 p.m. Pacific time.
Of course, even those papers whose editors managed to yell “Stop the presses!” and get the story into print have much more up-to-date news about the shooting in their digital editions today.
We get the print edition of the Sunday Times because, whenever we try to cancel in order to save money, we’re offered a special deal. Digital advertising isn’t worth much, but print ads are still fairly lucrative, especially in the Times and especially on Sunday. But when there’s a big, late-breaking story, digital is the place to be.
