That's a fascinating statistic, Michael, and I tend to believe it.

Of course, when a reader navigates to a newspaper website, he usually does so with a specific article or type of article in mind. At least, I do. I read these newspapers online almost every day:

1. Chicago Tribune
2. Chicago Suntimes
3. NY Times
4. Peoria (IL) Journal Star
5. Decatur (IL) Herald-Review

I read the Chicago newspapers for news of the Cubs, bits about the blues scene, and for the organized crime stories... which I absolutely cannot get enough of.

I read the NY Times solely for the coverage of New York sports. Given the Times history of fabrication (Jayson Blair, the Duke lacrosse hoax), I assume that all Times news stories are really propaganda for the paper's pseudo-Marxist agenda. Sometimes, you can't escape this crap in the Times by restricting yourself to the sports pages. The Times is determined to find racism, sexism and homophobia in every nook and cranny of the sports world. What a bore! Whenever I encounter that vomit, I immediately cease reading.

I read the Peoria and Decatur Illinois newspapers for coverage of U of Illinois sports and for coverage of cultural and political issues from central Illinois. This keeps me in touch with a very important and always lively music scene.

I target specific writers and specific content when I read newspapers online. I've long since given up reading any newspapers cover to cover. And, given the noxious leftist bias of newspapers, I refuse to pay for them. (Don't tell me that newspapers aren't leftist rags. My first wife, also deceased, wrote for newspapers. I've spent a lifetime around the music press. Reporters are almost uniformly hard line leftists.)

Amusingly, the only paper I ever read cover to cover is The New York Post, and I do this only on rare ocassion... when I'm having lunch alone at a particular diner in Chelsea. Somebody always leaves behind a free copy. I just find the Post hilariously entertaining. The Post doesn't make any bones about the fact that it is a form of wildly exaggerated theater. It's funny. I wish I could say the same about the bilious, worthless NY Times.

Posted by: Shouting Thomas on October 16, 2007 11:10 PM

That's not surprising at all. Similar to Doubting Thomas, I often go to an online newspaper just for one article that is a link from somewhere else. This takes me to papers I would never otherwise read, sometimes ones I've never heard of.

Or I go to a newspaper online just for their sports section (like the Baltimore Sun and its Orioles coverage).

A more interesting question is do online readers spend more or less time overall reading newspapers than their deadtree counterparts.

Posted by: Gadsden on October 17, 2007 6:30 PM






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