My local paper has been free for three weeks, about what it’s worth. We believe the internet is a better source of the news.

I’ve taken a few knocks lately by the people in ivory towers who print newspapers, you know the one’s your parents read at breakfast and in the john.

Some of these have included comments that newspapers are fair, print the real original stories, are up to date, don’t advocate for causes and hence tell the truth, etc. Let’s look at the facts.

Up to date

Everything in this mornings paper happened yesterday. They stopped writing stories last night about midnight.

A Google search restricted by “Last Hour” gives me 20 stories that really are fresh “News”. A 24 hour search gives me thousands.

A newspaper is delivered to your door once a day. Newspapers used to print multiple editions though out the day as news developed. They dropped that to save money.

Internet news stories are delivered to my desktop about every 5 seconds.

Bloggers copy stories. Newspapers report the original story

I am looking at today’s Charlottetown Guardian. They printed 18 original stories but mostly the paper is full of free stuff you could have read on the Internet yesterday or last week.

In a 30 page newspaper, the amount of local news you get is very little, less than 3 pages. There is less than a page of local sports stories.

News from around the country and the world is just stuff the Guardian takes off the Internet and prints. You can read those stories much earlier, days if not weeks by telling Google what you like to read.

Google delivers the stories right on your desktop. What many people like is just browsing the headlines or only picking sports stories from their favorite teams or sports.

Bloggers write opinion. Newspapers report facts

We get accused of printing too much opinion in blogs, mostly by newspapers. If it wasn’t for the Guardian’s 1.24 pages of opinion what would be left of the Guardian? It would be mostly ads and Canadian Press stories, which are free.

There is almost as much room in the Guardian telling us someone’s opinions are there are stories about facts.

Opinion is the stock in trade of newspapers. The best newspapers in the world like the New York Times, Guardian UK, and the Globe and Mail hire lots of writers to report and comment on the news of the day. They call those people “journalists”.

We do publish opinions and pride our selves on reporting the story behind the story.

When newspapers print press releases or repeat lies spoken by politicians, we say “Hey! What’s the truth here?”

Only 7% of our stories are opinion pieces. Almost half of what you read on NJN Network are stories we researched and wrote ourselves.

That’s what journalists do. Good writers and journalists must be writers hate using anyone else’s words except for quotes.

Here are the statistics on our last 27 stories at NJN Network –

Most news is free

Most of the Guardian is free. The best stories are on the Internet. 8 or 9 reporters at the Guardian can’t hope to match the quality and depth of reporting available free on the Internet.

Here’s the sad numbers of how little news fills the pages of the Guardian

If most of the Guardian content is paid advertising, does that make the Guardian a paid lobbyist for their advertisers?

Technically no since lobbyists are  people who are paid to lobby government officials.

If they get most of their money from advertising, is that a vested interest of the Guardian.  If the Guardian hid the fact that they receive money from the Government of PEI, Canadian Tire and APM yes it would be a vested interest.

However, everyone knows the Guardian has advertisers who pay them money. It’s just business. How much the advertisers influence the 2.75 pages of news is a topic of conjecture and gossip. We don’t report gossip.

We think newspapers are a dying business model. That’s why we didn’t look into purchasing the Guardian when it was up for sale.

That’s why we are NJN Network.