Print is Alive and Well Today

The Washington Post's Web site has most any election angle covered and offers immediacy and interactivity. Yet readers are interested in .... the printed newspaper!

A suburban reader just e-mailed her neighborhood listserv, asking for any extra copies of the Post. Another lamented that the Post is sold out, even after printing 30% more copies. Yet another just walked from his workplace to the Post's office on 15th Street to get extra copies of the newspaper and found a line half-way down the block. People are waiting for the sale of a commemorative edition.

Interest was high for community newspapers as well. At the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle, Editor Karen Magnuson wrote about it in her Editors Corner blog. And Wanda Lloyd of the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser wrote that newspapers were the "'first draft of history' in Obama election."

Many have written print off as dead. But it seems that there are times that readers don't buy that obituary. They buy the printed edition.