Much to my distress our newspapers are dying, in their wake leaving a legacy of widespread ignorance. They have now (the Otago Daily Times excepted) stopped publishing their sadly diminishing sales figures.
The NZ Herald had the initiative to package up their print issue with their web-site access but inevitably, I suspect, will pull stumps on the printed version, particularly home delivery.
Fingers crossed however, that the ultimate outcome of this state of affairs will be a single national quality newspaper, read by a hard core of doers and shakers who call the shots.
Such a newspaper would of necessity largely compose opinion pieces, print nowadays beaten to the punch by the instant news electronic media provides. Considered intelligent analysis of an increasingly turbulent world has never been more essential.
The precedent is already there in Europe. Whether Kiev, Stockholm, Paris, Lisbon or wherever, newspaper booths all prominently display the accepted world’s best newspaper, namely the Weekend Financial Times. For that matter it’s also on sale everywhere in North America and most African and Asian cities.
To some extent this situation has been achieved in Australia with the Australian weekend edition, always a wonderful read.