Discussion Groups / English Usage / October 2006

Yep.  Hence "fishwrap" as a derogatory name for a newspaper thought
only suitable for that purpose.

And also this quote from Ethel Merman:

   "People eat it up, the gossip.  But it happens, when you are very
   much in the public eye.  ANd when anything happens that sort of
   rubs me the wrong way, I just say, 'yesterday's paper wraps
   today's fish.'" [_NY Times_, 5/29/1966]

(That's the earliest I can find for that saying, although a number of
websites and books call it (or something similar) a "journalist's
proverb".)

That's just English poverty.
In the Netherlands the proverbial use of old newspaper
is for wrapping fish, never for chips,

Jan

On 29 Oct 2006, Django Cat wrote

I'll tell you a serious difference (aside from portability) -- one
that annoys me:  perhaps counterintuitively, news websites are a
more linear read.

When I read a newspaper, I scan the headlines on the page;  perhaps
read a few lines of this one or that;  then settle down to read
them in full.

Websites tend not to work that way: once you've chosen a headline,
waited for the page to appear, and then read it (or not), you
clicked on it  on;  you usually have to return to the front page to
retrieve the full selection of headlines.  It's a "return to base"
model for scanning, rather than a single-page presentation of
stories.

(It's not as linear as podcasts -- where the presenter gets to
decide the speed at which you're going to be fed the story, since
you can't just jump to the last few paragraphs -- but it's not as
visually fluid as reading a paper.)