How I Read

You know print editions of newspapers are dying when the Wall Street Journal runs a positive review of your book and you read it online and then blog about it and fail to realize, until three days later, that you never got a copy of the print edition it appeared in. And then you realize you don’t mind that much; the digital version is what matters most, at least to you. I still haven’t seen a hard copy of Robert Kaplan’s review of Crude World in the Journal and I’m not sure I ever will. Same for the wonderful USA Today review that ran on Tuesday—I excitedly blogged and tweeted about it yet never thought to get an actual copy of the paper (so I don’t have one). I love newspapers and I think they are essential for our society but their digital iteration is the default setting of my life. And I am happy to pay for it when given the opportunity to do so–I subscribe to the online edition of the Journal, for instance.

Author: Peter Maass

I was born and raised in Los Angeles. In 1983, after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, I went to Brussels as a copy editor for The Wall Street Journal/Europe. I left the Journal in 1985 to write for The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, covering NATO and the European Union. In 1987 I moved to Seoul, South Korea, where I wrote primarily for The Washington Post. After three years in Asia I moved to Budapest to cover Eastern Europe and the Balkans. I spent most of 1992 and 1993 covering the war in Bosnia for the Post. View all posts by Peter Maass