In terms of media use, I suppose I reflect my generation. I was born right in the middle of the baby boom. As such, there are times when I reflect the generation ahead of me and at other times I act a bit like the generation that has followed.I still watch the evening news on TV and I read two daily newspapers. If I miss watching the news, I do not worry about it. If a paper sits for a day or two before I read it, there is still enough current content to warrant my picking it up. I subscribe to two weekly news magazines, but only because I get a really good deal. Actually, I do not read the one as much as I used to and the other has been doing a yearlong series on my hometown. I also subscribe to one religious magazine and to one baseball publication. I read these more carefully than anything else.
I must admit, however, that I do get a lot of news from the Internet. I use high speed Internet both at the office and at home. I depend on the Internet to do my job and it provides news and recreation at home. I also have two email accounts and I am on Facebook. But, I do not tweet.
Unlike most who are younger than I, I use my cell phone mostly just for phone calls. I cannot access the Internet with it, cannot transfer photos I take with it, and do not text with it because my plan charges me extra for text messaging. I still have a landline phone on the wall at home, but lately we have been questioning why we pay for something that we use so little.
When my copy of The Lutheran arrived in the mail this week, I was sad to see the editor note that subscriptions had fallen 13% in 2009. The prediction for 2010 is the same or worse. I am sure this reflects what is going on in our culture with regard to the delivery of news and information. No doubt these tough economic times have also taken a toll.
I have always enjoyed reading The Lutheran and still depend on it to provide church news that I do not receive elsewhere. As a parish pastor, I always encouraged my congregations to continue their every member subscriptions. I felt the expense was justified by keeping everyone informed. I believe it helped keep our members connected to the work of the wider church.
Is reading the print version of The Lutheran just another “old-fashioned” thing to do? I think it still serves an important purpose for many of us. Is the electronic version of The Lutheran attractive enough to get people to pay for subscriptions? I do not know. If you are not currently reading The Lutheran, how do you keep up with ELCA news? I think this church would be well-served by an informed membership.
Comments? If you are not already there, go to the blog site: http://niselca.blogspot.com/. --JC
I don't think the decline in readership of The Lutheran is due to the growth of electronic media as much as some might imagine. After all, the ELCA's core demographic is 50+, and those are the folks who still read newspapers and print magazines. It's probably just not seen as essential, and in this economy people are cutting back.
ReplyDeleteThe big question for me is: what would I really be missing out on by not subscribing? The Lutheran is a mix of three things: 1) national stories I can find out about elsewhere, 2) local stories held up to national attention, which is nice I guess, and 3) letters/opinions/editorials, which are a dime a dozen online.
Personally, I subscribe to the ELCA News RSS feed, which gets me enough info to get by with.
I think one of the reasons that circulation is down for the Lutheran is that many congregations no longer provide or subsidize the subscription for their members.
ReplyDeleteJeff, I am the generation after you, on the early end of Generation X. In high school, we still took typing not keyboarding. Computers were there, but we stored our 1 + 1 = 2 semester project programs on a cassette tape. No hard drives or floppies and two computers for a school of 2000 students.
I completed college with a typewriter. During my highway patrol days, our department was a bit technologically challenged. My squad car literally had the old Adam 12 siren box and radio even in 1995. By the time seminary came, computers were solidly part of educational life.
I do have a blackberry. I can e-mail, change my calendar and the church calendar on the go and even work on a sermon when I have a spare moment. I even have a Barns and Noble account and can download and read novels on it. And, like many, I get my church news via the ELCA news feed and from other online sources. I have a "Lutheran" filter on my Google news page that will guide me to relevant stories, many of them from The Lutheran online.
Which I do think is where the Lutheran will eventually be heading as will our parish newsletters and such will be. Can it be supported as a pay site? I don't know. But just as the print Lutheran has had to add much more advertising content, so will any online version.
Records were still real popular when I started high school. Although we all knew that cassette tapes were the new medium and that records were slowly going extinct, many of us thought that there would always be some records sold. After all, we all had record players. The day came before we knew it when the records were gone. (I know, supposedly there are still some records be produced today, but it is a really niche market). We knew why, most of us even loved what was replacing the record, but something was sad when that first best selling album came out and there was no record. I think the same think is happening with print media. Some form of it may always be around, but it soon will be a novelty rather than a primary means.
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I enjoy getting The Lutheran magazine each month. I have enough screen time each day that I prefer the print version though I imagine I would use the online content if the site was better designed.
ReplyDeleteThe Lutheran is one way people across the church can stay informed and connected. These are vital ingredients in this church's ecology of interdependence among our three expressions along with agencies and institutions.