Internet Newspaper???

It’s been nearly 3 months since my last blog. This is not because of the lack of topics to write on, but the lack of appreciable time I spent in front of a computer. Today I have some time in hand to kill and thought may be will scribble something.

A colleague of mine was browsing through the website of a popular Indian Daily and in course of the conversation said that of late he has stopped reading the newspaper and tracks the stories more on the net.

When I was asking others if they do the same they came up with mixed responses. But on a whole everyone said they don’t spend the same amount of time with the newspaper that they used to do maybe 3 or 4 years back. One reason for this might be because of the fact that, we spend more time in front of the computer at our work place or even at home.

I recall the time when we had dial up connection in my home till about a year back. The connectivity used to be so slow that I used to get irritated waiting for my mail box to open. In a situation like that opening a news site was out of question. Now that we have decent enough broad band speed we don’t think twice before logging onto a news site.

But I feel these news sites can’t give you the pleasure that you derive from reading a news paper while sipping a cup of coffee. One thing that everyone or at least most of us do, after getting up in the morning is to search for the news paper. I feel something missing in the day if I don’t happen to browse through the newspaper in the morning. The first happy moment of the day comes to me when I get my hands on the news paper after having to wait for my father to finish it and keep it back on the table.

I tried doing away with news paper while I was in my B-School, since I had access to both laptop and internet connectivity in my room. I used to log on to a news site as soon as I get up, but it never gave me the satisfaction that I used to get reading a news paper. The touch and feel factor of a news paper is more of an experience that cannot be substituted.

I too agree that the time we spend with the news paper has considerably decreased over the last few years. But that’s because of our increased exposure to the computer and ever increasing choice of news channels on TV. Almost all the news papers have started with the concept of e-paper, but I doubt if it’s a success.

RJ