【推荐1】The Onion was started by two university students in 1988. They said their paper was “America's finest news source”. For the first few years it enjoyed local popularity. Then in 1996 the Weekly Onion entered cyberspace. The new humorous online magazine became very popular. The website said The Onion had three million readers every week. The popularity of the online magazine led to increased interest in the print version. The Onion print magazine said it had almost one million readers each week.

The Onion covers all kinds of subjects and uses a kind of humour called satire. They use serious, journalistic language and style to make fun of people's ideas and activities.

For example, once an Onion online cover showed a picture of a dissatisfied young man in his disorganized home. The headline read, “Plan to straighten out entire life during week-long vacation yields mixed resuts.’ The report that followed was written in newspaper style, but, of course, this man's problems were not really worthy of newspaper coverage!

The Onion includes features found in a real newspaper. For example, there is a section called American Voices. It includes photographs of several people who have been stopped on the street. They provide their opinions on whatever subject they are asked about. They are very funny, but what is funnier is that The Onion uses the same photographs every week, but changes the names. So, readers realize quickly that the joke is on them.

Onion Editor-in-Chief Scott Dikkers has published several books of collected Onion reports. The most recent is called Embedded in America. Not everyone likes The Onion. Some people find it offensive. Others do not recognize it as a humour magazine and sometimes Onion stories are reported by real news organizations as real news reports.

【推荐3】Print newspapers will soon be part of our history. While the Internet and some other media are rapidly developing in a world where people’s lifestyles are more than busy, there seems to be less time for newspapers. The newspaper industry, in countries where newspapers have dominated as a medium for many years, is now struggling more than ever.

Newspaper circulation (发行量) has been declining since over 40 years ago. “I foresee, in one or two generations, a society where you will access a newspaper only from a hand-held screen.” warns William Papatassos, a Blue & Gold advisor.

The Internet attracts most of the younger people. The problem of newspapers is called “the problem of the 18-to 35-year-old people”. This group of people are not willing to replace the regular readers who grew up using this traditional medium. And they like to surf the Internet to search for information. Some experts predict that by 2043, in America and many other countries, newspapers will no longer exist.

Fortunately, print newspapers still exist and offer advantages to readers. “Newspapers encourage more thoughtful thinking,” says the journalist Kathleen Jasonides.” At this point, there is still room for it. Some people do not like reading shortened articles online."

But some newspapers including Blue & Gold provide articles of online editions, bearing in mind the increasing use of the Internet. However, the great variety of specialised information offered by many other websites prevents these online editions from developing. In addition, the newspaper industry has kept its best journalists for print; therefore the quality of articles is not the same.

The only thing that we know for sure is that print newspapers are facing a crisis due to lack of revenues from traditional advertising and the appearance of the Internet.