World's Oldest (Sort Of) Newspaper Goes Internet-Only

from the take-that,-paper dept

While it’s officially the world’s oldest newspaper, Sweden’s Post och Inrikes Tidningar apparently hasn’t published much actual “news” reporting for the last century or so. Founded in 1645, the paper is “the official news organ of the government,” but these days is mostly used for “announcements from publicly listed companies.” That basically makes it sound like a glorified press release service. Either way, it’s decided to give up paper and will now go internet-only — a move that plenty of other papers will probably follow over time, though few will take the same 362 years that PoIT did.


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Comments on “World's Oldest (Sort Of) Newspaper Goes Internet-Only”

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18 Comments
Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Geeks and grammar - ne'er the twain...

Maybe he’s right in his “wrong-dom” 🙂

He stated:

“It’s is NOT a conjunction for it has”

which he is Correct in that it is not a conjunction, it’s a contraction for “It Has”.

Isn’t this like when the teacher would yell at you in school with “Ain’t AIN’T a word!” ?

Anonymous Coward says:

With all the contrasting arguments, I’m not sure if Techdirt got it right or not. Either way, it has given us yet another article about how newspapers are outdated and should all switch to an online format.

Doesn’t anyone get tired of staring at a computer screen all day? I know I do.

I enjoy those weekend mornings just sitting around reading the paper and eating breakfast sitting on the porch and relaxing. It’s just doesn’t compare.

JS Beckerist (profile) says:

News

News: -noun. a report of a recent event; intelligence; information: His family has had no news of his whereabouts for months.

As news is supposed to be recent, getting your news a day late is only barely acceptable, and that’s only because it’s been the standard for hundreds of years. The internet provides an instant method for communicating “news,” and therefore is a more efficient and expedient way to distribute it. As more and more people either get access to the internet (or die?), the percentage of internet users to non-internet users is increasing on a daily basis. This is only a natural evolution of a very old industry…

David B says:

Not

There isn’t much use for a newspaper that carries world and national news a day or two late. TV didn’t kill the newspaper because it still only gave sound bites and newspapers had much deeper coverage. Now the Internet has the depth of coverage and also the timeliness that newspapers will never have unless they become Internet newspapers. Most of newspapers revenue comes from advertisements so subscriptions should only be charged for hardcopies if needed.

Newspapers do have local news and sports that TV or the Internet doesn’t. This is their “bread and butter” and they better learn it. News feeds of world and national news isn’t even worth the cost of the paper it’s written on. I for one don’t even look at those in the local newspaper because I have already read it on the Internet. On the other hand, local papers are the only place to get local k-12 stories, local sport news, and information about your home town (the space you actually spend most of your time). Also local governments are usually only covered in the local paper unless something major goes wrong.

Gustaf Erikson (user link) says:

Post och Inrikes Tidningar

PoIT is used for stuff like patent announcements, bankruptcies and so on:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-och_Inrikes_Tidningar

As such it’s hardly a newspaper anymore, more a gazette like the Federal Register.

The interesting part is that the Swedish Academy got a lot of their income from its sale. I know they were against it going online, but I think they’ll manage somehow.

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