Newspapers and magazines can be used to enhance literacy skills but also provide students with information that they can apply in any subject. Reading newspapers while I was at school helped me to relate what I was learning in the classroom to current events and vice versa, and I believe that this helped me do well academically in the classroom.
Sadly a major source of newspapers and magazines - the newsagent has fallen to store closures. The pace of closures has accelerated further in recent years.
Newsagents now compete with supermarkets, convenience stores and petrol stations for the sale of newspapers and magazines and big-box retailers such as Officeworks, BigW, Target and Kmart for stationery.
Even lottery sales cannot escape competition. In NSW, it is possible to purchase lottery tickets online or in person at a convenience store or petrol station, despite the "rivers of gold" that lottery sales bring to the agent.
Newspaper publishers have taken over the home delivery of newspapers, which in decades past provided income for newsagents. You could either have home delivery organised through the publisher (paid the newsagent commission per newspaper delivered) or you could arrange directly with the newsagent for home delivery with the delivery fee added to the cover price of the newspaper.
Closures mean that a source of information is being taken away from us and along with a source of reading material, but also the control how of how we acquire and maintain a newspaper and magazine collection within a school.
The decline of newsagencies, along with my interest in reading newspapers and magazines, has motivated me to explore this.
After the holidays, I am going to reflect on their decline and what it means for us in terms of promoting reading.
