The birth of the first national print paper in a generation must of course be celebrated as a happy event in itself but ... does the 'time-poor newspaper reader' actually exist?
Of course not. Don't you know a rhetorical question when you hear one?
What one does with one's time is a general matter of choice dictated by personal interest and priorities. If someone under the age of 30 says to you, apropos not reading newspapers, 'I am a time-poor person', then this is not a statement of fact but an advertisement of self-importance. She or he is actually saying:: 'I have better things to do because my life is so busy.' Busy-ness in this context is rated a virtue because it implies solvency, sexiness, engagedness and I'm-booked-up-ness. Being seen reading a newspaper suggests you have time on your hands - you saddo.
The reality is that the life of our 'time-poor newspaper reader' (TPNR) is as time-rich as that of anyone who loafs about the house all day calling themselves a freelance writer or video game designer. The several time windows in a day include thumb-twiddling lavatory longueurs, yawny rail journeys to and from (with delays and no-shows for free-time enrichment), mental and physical office truancy (for smokes, googling, gossing or just standing about in Cafe Nero queues or chomping muffins), etc. All large-paned time windows afford potential hours for the reading of newspapers.
But there's just one problem. More and more Pret A Manger-bound youngies would rather do something else. Like read a newspaper free online or on their iPad. Or grow fat on muffins.
So good luck to i. And my condolences to the Independent.
8 comments:
I found time to read i. Just the once.
Metro for the middle classes?
Schizophrenia never does any good.
Metro's read by anyone who can read and is on a Tube train. Disposability is the trick.
Ew. Weird.
Your friend Stefanao Hatfield may be i's editor soon. He won't have forgotten your expose on his leaving his wife and kids when he edited the London Paper. Will you resume hostilities?
That depends on whether he practises illegal ageist workplace policies even though he's an old cunt now well in his 40s.
I'd hoped Clover Vitriol might have mellowed in his long rest. But I see he was just recharging his batteries. Better find a new career then.
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