Vchimpanzee

I would read three magazines at libraries--''[[Billboard (magazine)|Billboard]]'', ''[[Advertising Age]]'' and ''[[Broadcasting & Cable]]''. The third one I mostly looked at online because of a [[PDF]] database of articles which was just like reading the real magazine. That changed when I was no longer allowed access to the PDF version but had to settle for the "full text" version, but I continued to look at it just online until even that was not available. And as of 2015, I mostly looked at the other two online as well. And while I look at these articles, I find topics that should be addressed or covered in more detail on Wikipedia. ''Billboard'' I could never remember to look at any more, but as of 2023 I'm trying to again. ''Broadcasting & Cable'' is no longer available anywhere that I can access, and ''Ad Age'' isn't available in a convenient form.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed my routine (see [[#Where do I edit and why?|below]]), but I used to read six online newspapers each day (but now all charge for more than a certain number of articles a month; getting around this means visiting various libraries). Maybe "read" isn't the right term, because this took maybe 30 minutes. The only paper I really read is ''[[The Charlotte Observer]]'', which I pay to get home delivered the old-fashioned way. I rarely go to that paper's web site but if I see something I believe ought to go on Wikipedia, I might go to the web site to make sure I contribute a link to the article, which won't work after a certain period of time but it'll help people verify the article exists. The other papers I look at have local news, comic strips and syndicated columns not in the ''Observer''. Five of the papers (all which now charge for their web sites, though one is free at several libraries) I would see at libraries, four of those every two weeks. One I would see every two months for Sundays and once a year on microfilm, just to make sure, at the beach. Looking at specific stories online helps me get through the papers faster when I look at them for real. The original purpose of looking at the papers online was to make sure I saved articles for printout while they were still free, rather than spending money to [[photocopier|copy]] them from the real paper or taking notes from them that would be hard to figure out later. Instead of paying to print out each article when I see it (I don't have a printer at home), I save articles to an email to myself which is later combined with other emails to myself and printed out as one long email. There is also the risk the library won't have one of the actual papers. And for one of the six papers, there was no other library to go to if it was missing (when I go to the mountains the library where I go doesn't have the microfilm and I'm not likely going to the one that does), so I have to have seen the articles in each paper online while they were free. And since this paper now charges for looking at more than a certain number of its articles per month, and I did not have free access to their archives ([[Wikipedia:Newspapers.com|Wikipedia now gives me free access]] to [[newspapers.com]]) as I do for the archives of other papers (see [[#Where do I edit and why?|below]]) I was afraid it was unlikely Wikipedia would benefit from any local information there unless someone else contributed it. I have figured out a way around limits, however. This was a slight risk for the other papers but I could usually see papers I missed at another library. Sometimes while looking at these papers online, I saw articles (including national news) that contain information that should go on Wikipedia. To save time, I might copy the information into an email and edit Wikipedia later, so this explains why the accessdate isn't the date of the edit in some cases.