This article from the New York Times gives a nice little summary of the various personal publiching services out there on the Internet. From the way this article reads, book making sounds like the next natural evolution of scrapbooking. I certainly do like it … much better than scrapbooking. It’s quicker and cheaper.
Daily Archives: April 28, 2008
Consumers cut Corners on Food, but Not Electronics
Some rather interesting and seemingly backwards thinking is discussed in this article from the New Yorks Times. It seems that like myself, many Americans are making different food choices and spending as if we are in a recession. For the most part the trade off are meat and name branded goods. On the other hand people are not necessary skimping on gaming or electronics. Why is this? Even in my own little world I have this weird thinking going on in my head. I’m conciously cutting back hard on the household food purchases, but at the same I’m frustrated that our 4-year entertainment laptop is barfing on the playback latest high-def video files. As for the food, I can report from grocery shopping this weekend, it difficult to distinquish more store brand products from name brand, so I actually did that switch a while ago (much to my husband’s chagrin). Cooking is very flexible, so you make what you can with what you’ve got — it really isn’t that big of deal to change things around — at least for now. I don’t understand why I think it’s okay to consider buying a computer now, though, other than I’m delusional. I have a friend who is behaving the same way, skimping on food, but recently purchased a DSLR camera to capture her kids while they are young because they won’t sit still long enough for her point-and-shoot.
Personally, I not sure about what to think about “recessionary” spending and the priorities of Americans. In a way I think it makes it seem like the whole lot of us is crying crocodile tears over food cost when our solution is to switch to a store brand or to substitute pork for beef while still continuing to buy electronics. On the other hand, I don’t know what to make of the “news” in this article. The changes in spending don’t seem that drastic to me. Of course there’s also the possibility that we’re all delusional. I doubt it though. In many ways and economic slowdown makes for great news — so it’s tough to say what the real situation is when the creation of a dire situation benefits the news providers.
The Decline of Network News
Here’s an interesting article from Ad Age about the decline in viewership of and advertising during the network news. Some “Duh” points brought up is that fact that the desired core demographic of upper income 18 – 49-year olds are not at home during the evening news hours (4 – 7PM). Consequently, the average age of evening news viewers is 60 — retired folks I imagine. Personally, I don’t bother watching the local or evening news broadcasts because they are neither informative nor entertaining. I get my news from the radio, via the Internet, and reading print magazines — that is if I care to get the news. Sometimes I skip the news that isn’t tech related due to fatique. I know that sounds bad, but honestly has anything really changed in the last few weeks with regards to the US Presidential Election, Iraq, and the US economy? I would like to get some world news, but believe it or not, International news is kinda hard to come by in the US.
Interestingly, Ad Age is also running a series of articles on the decline of the newspapers. The article run today speculates as newspaper readers die, they aren’t being replaced with new readers. I wonder if that’s the case for network news as well.
Moving on, the article is careful to explain that the news is not no longer relevant. Rather, people have more choices for how they consume the news — TV, radio, and the Internet via computers, cellphones, and other mobile devices. As such, it seems that advertisers can diversify their ads efforts. In my own experience, I see that news websites have a lot more videos now. I find the videos to be a pain for news items that could be described in 3 paragraphs or less. This is due to the load time for the video and the unavoidable 30-60-secs of ads that is tacked on to the front of the stream — sooo annoying. So much for high speed Internet … dear gosh the ISPs need to hurry up an upgrade their infrastructures.
On the whole, though, I’d say that the most useful and detailed news comes from online and print magazines. Broadcast and Internet news amounts to a bunch of sounds bites that generally remind people of the major headlines. The print magazines, though, like newpapers have nice long meaty articles. Unlike newspapers thought, most magazines are weekly, bi-weekly, or monthlies. Since they are easy to transport, a magazine can be taken almost anywhere for convenient reading at the reader’s leisure. Perhaps this contributes to the continued success of magazines. Perhaps this, too, could be the future of the newspaper — fewer issues, small form factor, and glossy media. I think I would get a weekly San Diego/San Diego county news magazine if there was one. What about you?
Anyhow, use the link given in the first sentence to read the article.
More Rambling 