I was saddened to hear the Daily News has shut down.
I'd been a fan of the DN for quite a while. I was a subscriber back in 1996-1997 when I was taking the bus to work. I liked to read it on the bus ride. Starting in 1997 there were a lot of new expenses and stuff to do so I let my prepaid subscription lapse and never got around to starting it again.
The early 1990s was a good period for the Daily News. They had a diverse and strong roster of columnists including Tom Regan, Stephen Kimber, Peter March, Charles Saunders, Parker Barss Donham, and Ted Byfield to name a few. And Mou's cartoons were really good. Sometimes he went too far but that was part of the charm. You might not agree with what the columnists wrote, but they did challenge you to think about things and be aware of different perspectives.
It's tough for the newspapers. Modern consumers don't need to rely on the papers to filter and decide what we need to know about. Consumers can drill directly to what they think is important and get much more detail.
Starting in the mid 1980s with expanded cable tv, that brought channels like Muchmusic, CNN, TSN and ESPN. It got easier for people to bypass the newspaper and get more detailed coverage of stuff they were interested in.
So for example with the newspaper football fans had to wait until Monday to get 1-2 text paragraphs and a box score on the Jets NFL game if we were lucky. Starting in the 80s we could watch NFL Primetime on cable and get detailed game highlights and analysis on Sunday night.
With the Internet the competition is even more. I can get NFL coverage, full transactions, news groups to talk football with other fans, detailed game reports, betting lines, and all the team game history going back years 24 hours a day for only the cost of Internet access.
When something interesting happens now we just type it in on news.google.com and we can get it all instantly. The Chronicle Herald, a perennially bad newspaper, will have challenges in the years ahead in the new information world. The passing of the DN is more bad news than good news to the comical.
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