A few parts of what used to be my ideal morning: newspaper spread across table, plate or bowl food set on the part of the paper I’m not reading, coffee cup staining some text I’ll eventually want to read, large sheets of text and images and ads. It’s so familiar and comfortable for me.

I’m reading less and less on paper. I subscribe to print magazines that I also read in either Play Magazines on my GalaxyS3 or Nexus7 or in the NewsStand on my iPadMini. I subscribe to a magazine on my Android phone/tablet (via Play Magazines) that I don’t receive in print at all.
I’m reading the print version less and finding it less valuable. I’m considering stopping subscription to the print magazine and just paying for access on phone and tablet.
For years we had the New York Times and SF Chronicle newspapers delivered on weekends. We cancelled our paper NYTimes delivery a year or two ago and switched to paying for “All Digital Access.” Now the NYTimes is delivered on our tablets and smartphones. We still receive the Chronicle in paper on weekends and our daughter reads the comics.

Now my ideal morning has me sitting in a comfy chair with a tablet and a cup of coffee. On a tablet (I currently use either a Nexus7 or an iPadMini), I read 2 newspapers, 3 magazines, and a multitude of news articles in apps and in a feedreader. I skim through all of that in 20 minutes, saving or forwarding articles I want to come back and read in detail. I can share, save, email, copy/paste content and consume more in one sitting from multiple sources. I don’t miss having so much paper in the house to recycle.
The only thing I miss about paper newspapers/magazines is a physical experience of the breadth of a fully open publication on a table or in my hands. It’s a nostalgic emotion. I wonder if my elementary school daughter will feel the same nostalgia when she starts reading more on devices/online than in print. She currently receives a few magazines in the mail each month and reads more books in paper format than on a device.
For me, because I didn’t grow up with handheld devices, my youth feels farther away as I give up consuming content on paper.




