And it takes too much of the readers time, the Western World's most sought-after commodity. An editor at Time Magazine, who went from its Web version to the printed version, said that if the printed version had come second, it would be hailed as a great innovation. For those of us who love and live by the literally printed word, the future is a little scary. Telephones replaced telegrams, cars replaced the train, and airplanes replaced the ocean liner. Obviously, paper media will change just as radio changed, but has thrived, not died, with television.
Daily newspapers are large businesses, larger, say, than the largest TV station in the same market.
They are also the chief generator of news. The classifieds and Living pages help support the news coverage. If dailies lose revenues, news generation itself will decline, because no other media could afford to pick it up. The value of media and the future of media has been impossible to predict.