Why the Word "News" Needs to Come out of Newspapers

Seems like newspapers like to trumpet stale news on their front pages, reinforcing the impression that there's no point in reading them because they're so far behind in reporting what's happening. Newspapers usually publish “news” that are a day old. One can hear the news through the day on the radio, watch them unfold on TV –as was the case with the death of Michael Jackson- and read many updates on the Web, including on some of these papers' sites. Yet, still, this is what editors decide to deliver the next morning. John Temple, the former editor, president and publisher of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Colorado, which printed its final edition after almost 150 years on Feb. 27, 2009 says: “I worry how damaging this is for the future of newspapers. The first thing I read most mornings is the WSJ news digest on the front page. It's truly useful because it gives me a good sense of what happened in the intervening 24 hours. But I'm not interested in a longer story about something I already know about unless it truly takes me into new territory. I think the insistence on sticking with a conventional approach to news could be one of the factors that will drive newspapers into the ground - except for those loyalists who just can't give up on reading a paper. Maybe that's a rational approach to running a business, but it sure is dull and it sure doesn't seem to demand much from the newspaper or its staff.”