Print vs. Digital: A Tough Choice

Even though I have been reading the Courier News as an online subscriber for many months now, I sometimes wake up and start for the door to go get the paper off the porch. Instead, I have to sit down in front of a device that cost several hundred dollars to read it. And when the device fails, as it did last week, I have to pay more than $100 to get it going again.

Reading the newspaper is just one of my habits that has changed since print media folks started vaunting "digital platforms" or, as in the case of Newsweek, gave up print altogether.

I was given the balance of my subscription in online editions, but I can't get the password to work and anyway I was not happy with the magazine's snarky tone after the management changed.

The New Yorker is a different matter. I have relied on it for quite a few decades as a cultural guide and curator, going back to the days when it cost well below a dollar per issue. When my renewal notice arrived and asked me either to choose between print or digital, or pay a whopping fee for both, I began weighing the options. Print editions tend to pile up, but they are supremely portable. A digital subscription would cut the clutter of half-read copies, but would not have the tactile appeal of print. I caved and got the dual option, mainly just to put off making a choice.

Now the Kindle is a digital godsend, especially when a book has 600- to 800-plus pages and tries the capacity of my arthritic fingers to hold it. I recently read "Far From the Tree" on the Kindle, but took it out of the library to see how the chapters were arranged on paper. A big chunky book, it would have been very unwieldy for me to read in bed, with its tendency to slip out of my grip and make me lose my place.

So even though I am further along the continuum of digital acceptance than many people my age, I still have nowhere near the nimbleness of early adopters in younger generations. It's true that papers nowadays don't make that solid "thunk" on the porch that means it's time to brew some coffee and see what's new in the world, but I miss the routine. A keyboard and a screen are just not the same as ink on paper. Come to think of it, if I hadn't had to cancel due to someone continually swiping my paper off said porch, I would probably still be a print subscriber.

Well, thanks anyway for reading the blog online. It beats hell out of having to hand out one story at a time on paper. If you are facing a choice between print and digital versions of your longtime favorite reading matter, maybe the blogs are the "gateway" to digital habits. What do you think?

--Bernice