🗞️ News about newspapers is never good news. So, the not wholly unsurprising announcement that London’s daily Evening Standard will only be printed weekly comes with sadness. 🚊 There are fewer commuters and those who are on the tube or overground are making use of the Wi-Fi. 📱 Even the paper’s editor, Dylan Jones, recently admitted he never reads a print newspaper. 📰 These shifts are hardly breaking news anymore, but they do need us to take out our earphones and pay attention. 🚨
The people are what makes these institutions: whether it’s the bellowing by the tube at rush hour, or those who write the articles. ✍️ Journalist Tom Leonard’s sepia-toned reflection is that the Standard was ‘the closest you could get in the real world to a newspaper in a classic Hollywood film, with reporters and photographers actually rushing out together on stories… and editors actually occasionally saying dramatic things like “hold the front page”.’ But we’re losing more than nostalgia, and even more than the life-altering job losses. We are going through the largest shift in information dissemination since the arrival of the printing press five hundred years ago.
🔗 Read more on Seen & Unseen.
📸: Derek Key, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.