I'll admit that reading the newspaper is part of a daily routine for me at the start of the day. This is the same as those who need a coffee to start the day and something I could easily go on and on with
There has been so much discussion within the media itself about the role of newspapers in society. The rise of the internet has cut the cost of publishing news down to zero. Online news sites can cater to specific audiences or topics. News can be relayed through television, radio and the internet as soon as it happens. Competition is tougher than ever.
Printing a newspaper has never been cheap either. It's the advertising and classified sections that has kept the cover prices down for decades. With revenue falling, cover prices have had to rise. Back in Year 10 (2001), newspapers cost around half the price they are now.
More and more, people question the need to read (or buy) a newspaper. This question also comes up with School Libraries. For newspapers like The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian they no longer offer heavily discounted subscriptions to schools, not even to students themselves. Merely, they have given up on trying to recruit new readers. As they say, "get em when they're young". That message is gone.
There are digital subscriptions available for The Sydney Morning Herald that allow access to digital replicas of the days paper and archived papers (from 2006 onwards) but they are not necessarily cheap.
I have found in many instances, students barely touch the newspapers in the libraries that have them, Schools have stopped providing newspapers altogether. So what is the problem even though this saves the student from going out and buying their own copy?
I feel that students are probably not aware that they are available in the first place. They don't know that the library provides them. At one school we encountered this by promoting their availability in print and electronic form especially The Sydney Morning Herald. Alot of subjects still require students to collect a portfolio of newspaper articles especially at HSC level. I even tutored one student in how to access it online and this was only after I told them that it was available. Make sure its reported in your library feature in the school newsletter. I should challenge myself at any school to promote periodicals including its relevance to learning,
The other big issue is that young people can have a mindset that the web is the "be all and end all" for news but this isn't good for learning. As a Teacher Librarian, I have to educate students on the need to use a variety of sources in their learning. Newspapers are invaluable in providing material to support student learning. I think newspaper websites leave out alot of the smaller articles that might be embedded say 12 pages in on the top right corner of the page.
Schools now have photocopying systems that have free scanning to the persons email address. Again, us library staff forget to remind our students that such a service is available. No pages need to be cut out at all and the student can always print the clipping out if they need to.
I have been impressed how teachers at some schools rely on the newspapers to aid their classroom teaching and learning especially where the articles will relate right back to what they are learning. Newspapers can make the learning more relevant because the link to the real world is established.
