Online Newspapers: Will Older Americans Adapt?

Photo by Joerg Sarbach/AP Photo

Ron Pampreen plinks keys with his index fingers as he navigates a digital page of the Detroit Free Press at a senior center in Birmingham, Mich. No worry he’ll spill Cheerios and OJ on the keyboard here at a training session, but the possibility looms large in his mind as he contemplates catching up on events over breakfast at home without his daily newspaper.

“Reading newspapers online is weird and new,” says Pampreen, 77, who came with hopes of teaching his wife, Pat, the ropes of online journalism. The couple have shared daily news bits over breakfast for almost 50 years and don’t intend to haul the computer into the kitchen and risk making a bigger mess. Yet new habits must emerge.

This month, the Pampreens’ newspapers—the Detroit News and Free Press, with a combined daily circulation of nearly half a million—reduced home delivery to three days a week and are now publishing an e-edition daily. The couple, like many of their neighbors and friends, are adjusting their well-honed reading habits lest they miss out on the news of the day.

A changing medium

Many older Americans are, or will soon be, in the same position, grappling to embrace new technology as economic changes force newspapers to put their content solely or partially online—or shut down for good. “Daily circulation dropped 4.6 percent nationwide during a six month period in 2008, the biggest drop seen in the last 20 years,” said Neal Lulofs, senior vice president of the Audit Bureau of Circulations, which tracks newspaper and magazine circulation. Newspaper advertising revenue also dropped 17 percent from 2007 to 2008, equaling a $7.5 billion loss.

As a result, more than 80 U.S. newspapers have dropped at least one publication day since Jan. 1, according to news accounts. Some major dailies, such as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a 140-year-old newspaper, now publish their content completely online. Others have ceased printing altogether: the Rocky Mountain News, the Baltimore Examiner, the Albuquerque Tribune and the San Juan Star among them.

Such change isn’t absorbed so easily, especially among avid newspaper readers. People can watch local news, listen to talk or public radio, but print newspapers fulfill a distinct niche and a ritual experience. A daily newspaper has information often difficult to find anywhere else—local school board stories, the comics, advertisements, the crossword and Sudoku puzzles, movie listings, classified ads and death notices.

The disappearance of this kind of information can be upsetting for those who no longer have their newspapers. David Techner, funeral director at Ira Kaufman Chapel in Southfield, Mich., said the loss of print is a giant problem for older people, who worry they won’t learn of the death of friends, neighbors or members of their faith community.

To help them out, Techner started an e-mail blast, which goes out each day at 5 a.m., to notify subscribers of who died, details of the arrangements and where the family prefers contributions be sent. Subscribers can click on Techner’s website and gain access to the digital daily newspapers in Detroit to learn of other deaths in the region. “It is remarkable how many people are signing up for the service,” Techner says. “They have followed birth and death announcements all their lives and don’t want to stop now.”

Switching over

Once a newspaper migrates partially or totally to the Web, readers will need access to a computer with an Internet connection with enough broadband power to display clear headlines and comics. They’ll also need to know how to use it.

There are a number of ways for readers to acclimate themselves to getting news online. For example, staff members of the Detroit Media Partnership traveled to community centers around the metropolitan region to teach people how to use their new electronic versions. Ron Pampreen and 16 of his contemporaries attended one such training seminar, investing about an hour with online coaches learning how to change the screen views, set up passwords, increase text size and download obituaries and crosswords.

“You can use the search button to find a cherry pie recipe from Sunday’s paper, you can view the paper as a whole or increase the size of an obituary for easy reading,” says Debora Scola, the Detroit Media Partnership community affairs director, who’s serving as one of the coaches.

With one subscription to one or both papers, up to three users can click on a website that pulls up a PDF (portable document format) of the whole paper sold in newsstands. It looks similar to a newspaper—even turns pages—and allows a variety of reading options. Unlike many other online papers, this version has no flashing images and disruptive ads that burst out of the middle of the copy.

Another advantage to online subscribers is e-notify, which sends e-mails automatically every time people, places or topics of interest appear in the paper. A search function allows interested readers to catch up with the players and scores of a favorite sports team, and advertising inserts can be viewed for deals and coupons throughout the week. Any problems? Hit the help button and find the answers online.

Plan B

But what if a reader has no computer—or no easy access to one? The Detroit Media Partnership is also exploring rentals of electronic readers, akin to the Amazon Kindle in size and shape, that would provide access to newspaper copy wherever people are.

Plastice Logic—a company based in Cambridge, England, and Mountain View, Calif.—is partnering with the Detroit News and Free Press to make the papers available on the thin electronic reader, which weighs less than a glossy magazine. Within a year, news junkies will be able to read the online device over breakfast with a purchase or lease price far less than that of a computer.

“As envisioned, it would receive a download of the morning ‘paper’ around 5:30 a.m. and have the pages waiting for you to read with your morning coffee,” says Ron Dzwonkowski, editorial columnist for the Free Press, noting his paper is one of the first in the country to test the new e-reader. “You’d ‘turn’ them with touch-screen controls, replicating the experience of flipping through the newspaper,” he says.

The Plastic Logic device also has partnerships to distribute and sell content from the Financial Times, USA Today and other periodicals. No price has been set yet.

Electronic readers may make economic sense, according to Nicholas Carlson, media blogger for the BusinessInsider.com. He did the math and found out it costs the New York Times about twice as much money to print and deliver the newspaper over a year as it would cost to send each of its subscribers a brand-new Amazon Kindle at $359.

A higher hurdle for the visually impaired

However, people who have significant visual impairments or are blind will have a tougher time getting the news. Adapting a computer for a legally blind person to use may double or triple its cost, according to Bill Pasco, 56, a past president of the International Association of Audio Information Services and director of Sun Sounds of Arizona. Software-reading programs for low vision can run more than $1,000, and some users have trouble understanding the digitized voices. “We’re facing a real conundrum,” says Pasco.

One solution for the legally blind is to receive a recorded version of the paper over a low-band FM radio or telephone. Volunteers at Pasco’s Sun Sounds of Arizona and at 100 similar organizations around the country, read daily newspapers, magazines and voter guides in a specially equipped studio that stores the information electronically.

But these recording studios are struggling to adapt: The volunteers must have one or two computers handy with ample wireless access. They must also practice thwarting the jolt to their eyes when pop-up ads disrupt their reading as well as determine how to overcome the dead air when the computer reloads content. The readers could print everything to read, but “we can’t afford the cost of computer paper to download every story,” Pasco says. “We’re scrambling to figure things out.”

For those who merely get tired of staring at a computer for a prolonged time, Ruth D. Williams, M.D., a glaucoma consultant and partner at the Wheaton Eye Clinic in suburban Chicago, encourages readers to keep a bottle of lubricating eye drops close by. Many postmenopausal women and some men suffer dry-eye syndrome that causes burning and dryness during extended reading.

Other eye patients, however, might find reading opportunities enhanced by computers, suggests Williams. “If the online newspaper has a feature to enlarge the print and graphics, it may provide better resolution for reading than traditional papers,” she said.

Adapting

Back in front of a computer at the community center training session, Lionel Robbins, 80, a retired engineer from Bloomfield Township, Mich., is learning how much the online version of his daily newspaper has to offer, like clicking through the content and finding links to similar stories. He aces his training. At his side, his wife, Dolores, 76, says, only half joking, “I used to be his search engine; now he is miles ahead of me.”

He’s also ahead of many other loyal newspaper readers trying to find their way in the new world of daily information. And at least in his case, the papers’ months of research in creating an e-edition seem to be paying off. “I think the computer version is easier for people to embrace when they realize we’re trying to save the newspaper the best way we can,” says their coach, Debora Scola.

“This isn’t the death of newspapers,” says David Hunke, CEO of the Detroit Media Partnership. “It is the salvation.”

Maureen McDonald is a business journalist from Michigan.