Letters from the September 4, 2004, issue of Science News
By Science News
Funny pages
Horvath and Toffel’s comparison of the environmental impacts of the paper versus the electronic editions of the New York Times is a bit misleading (“Newspaper’s Footprint: Environmental toll of all the news that’s fit to print,” SN: 6/12/04, p. 374: Newspaper’s Footprint: Environmental toll of all the news that’s fit to print). A personal digital assistant isn’t good for advertising or newspaper browsing. In other words, the PDA users aren’t getting a comparable product. Still, the day is probably not too far off when digital displays will be sufficiently large, bright, light, flexible, and portable to handle newspaper-size pages with the ease and convenience of paper. Then, there will be powerful environmental and economic reasons for the shift to electronic news delivery.