http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/ford-may-grant…

2. I apologize for seeming to be (?) tangential, but there's a lesson here. Detroit often is guilty not only of a failed, decades-obsolete business model, inertia, and perhaps a willingness not to stay current with the latest developments (one source of complaints about the Ford Ranger, in fact, you can find in some of the reader remarks at the Web site to which I have provided links). Consider to what extent this is true of the publishing industry. Another example that may spring to your mind that is actually more relevent (though with newspapers, I have already said there's a problem with younger people not being as interested in reading, period, rather than preferring the Web to printed paper*), namely the old company in an old industrial city who suffered from digital technology even though its products still are used today: Kodak.

* Has the “paperless office” materialized as promised and gushed about? No. Printers for office and home computers are big business, because printers are frequently sought and used, and that is routinely for text-only printed pages, not for graphical material. People have _not_ rejected paper to read!

Joe, bear in mind that with not only newspapers and magazines, but also books, there's another problem, not just faddishness and technological gadgetry-gimmickry that many prefer over plain substance.* There's also the trend toward ignorance as well as frequent functional illiteracy; people simply aren't seeking to be informed about the news and other things as they used to do. So much of the time younger people spend on-line is spent doing what? Not reading the news or reading other non-fictional material, but listening to music, watching videos, and so on.

More than one trend is happening (and happening to publishers, of all kinds) right now.

* This reminds me of the vehicle I currently own, my second Ford Ranger, a small, affordable, very unpretentious, fully functional vehicle. Harmonizing emissions — not “global warming” garbage, but serious science-based health-and-safety-hazard emissions, i.e., real pollution — laws in some states and other laws to permit introduction of small attractive-European-market vehicles and Diesel vehicles is a non-fancy, very practical thing the Congress could do any time it wanted, and one day I'd like to see something I've thought of for a long time, a Diesel Ranger, perhaps with a Diesel six-cylinder engine like the Mercedes project, something offering drivers perhaps 300 ft-lb of torque over 2,000-3,000 RPM (can haul a full load in the bed and tow 5,000 pounds, too) and get 30 MPG with a light load or no load. I'd like that. Small, plain, no-nonsense, functional — like a book, or a newspaper. I already like the two Rangers I've owned (one of which I'm hauling 500 pounds with routinely here in Detroit).

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2008-ford-rang…