by Elizabeth M Young

Created on: September 19, 2009

Every day, it is a joy to go on line and call up the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, The LA Times and a couple of other fish wraps, but with a twist.

I read them on line!

In a bid to end the misery of hauling a weeks worth of paper, including the massive Sunday paper to the recycling, the on line alternatives have served as a very suitable alternative, with some wonderful additional benefits: the newspapers past issues are right there, too!

There is something about reading a well written, comprehensive, and well edited story about a major news issue and being able to refer to other sources in order to get the whole picture. As an example, the recent controversy over a $100 million bonus for an AIG executive, after AIG took billions in bailout funds, involved a "Pay Czar".

It was not difficult to access the online "morgue" for the paper and to find an earlier article about the "Pay Czar", who he is, and what he does. That article was well written and comprehensive. It was not difficult to go back to the original article with a new understanding of the whole complicated situation.

There is no way that the job would have been easy without quick access to good journalism, good fact checking, good editing, and good format. There is also no way that the job could be done by just using a search engine, then trudging through page after page of unrelated blogs, useless forums, and websites that promise information but which are actually just set up by entrepreneurs who are trying to get income from an overload of advertising.

Television is a hideous way to get news. By the time we run in, toothbrush in hand, to find out what the story is about, the news DJ has moved on to the opinion part of the report, which is the part of the report that comes after the headline as far as television is concerned.

A good printed treatment of the top news stories of the day, beautifully constructed by a seasoned veteran of investigation and writing, supervised by a steely eyed editor, is a thing of beauty.

As an added bonus, the on line versions of newspapers allow for far more quality photos that any printed newspaper could ever allow, so that an hour long review of "Paris Fashion Week" in high quality and in full color is possible.

Yes, there's nothing like a good cup of coffee, a warm croissant, and a fresh computer screen...

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