Is the Times irrelevant?

A few years ago, well about 10 years ago actually, there was a newsstand in Sheridan Square where you could pick up the Sunday Times on Saturday night. It was just across the street from the iconic tobacco store and near the uptown subway station. All the groovy West Villagers would hang out, cruise each other, laugh at all the wannabenotnot out of towners and wait for the Times truck to roll up with the latest news from The Old Grey Lady.

Those days have long since past. Yes, you can still find hipsters and not so hip wannabenotnots in Sheridan Square on Saturday night. But, you won’t find them waiting for the Sunday Times. I haven’t read a newspaper in at least 5 years, have you? That world is dead – gone forever like the horse and buggy or rotary dial telephones – or make that flip phones and answering machines. The digital world has quickly taken over our lives. Right now I’m typing in bed on my iPad while Enrique flips through flipboard on his iPhone.

It wasn’t always like that. We were a very wasteful household. We had subscriptions to atleast a dozen magazines. I’m sure the postman cursed us everytime he tried to stuff Vogue, New York Magazine, Shape, Elle, Men’s Fitness and of course Out Magazine into our mailbox. We consumed information without concern.

Then, along came the internet and the dawning of the digital age. Things didn’t change that much though. Instead of getting the news from the paper, all you had to do was go to nytimes.com. But, something has happened that has eroded the Times’ alpha top status. The iPad and Flipboard are the culprits. In iPad’s first year its number one app was Flipboard and things have only improved from there. The Times, like thousands of other media properties are on Flipboard. The problem, or benefit depending on how you look at it, is Flipboard is open to anyone. That means a blogger typing on his iphone on the bus can break a news item long before the Times’ corp of reporters, editors, fact checkers, etc.

That concept crystallized for me last Thursday. A friend and trend obsessed sister of style asked me if I’d seen the review of the YSL biopic in the Style section. I replied, “No. I reviewed that film on my blog over two weeks ago. It doesn’t take a fairy with a crystal ball to predict the future of the Times. It’s irrelevant.

Here’s my YSL review.