We probably think about different specific examples, so I will describe the ones I have seen.
Most of free papers I get contain advertising. Pictures of products, and prices. In most cases, nothing else. In some cases, a few short boring stories are included. I think that the goal here is to sell as much stuff as possible, and the publishers probably discovered that a legible content, beyond some bare minimum, does not really help sell more.
Then I get a free newspaper from our house caretaker. In this case the goal is to provide us some basic house-related info, and to remind us about how lucky we are to have this specific caretaker. This is the nearest example to free newspaper education I have seen, but it is extremely limited in scope.
Sometimes I get a municipal newspaper (usually when the municipal election is near), which provides some info about what happenned around us (culture, construction, problems) and gently reminds us about how much our municipal representatives did for us and why we should vote for them again.
At university I have seen some free newspaper for students, rather boring. My suspicion was that it was just a pretext to get some government funding, put money in editors’ pockets, and generate some output with random content. Anyway, it was supposed to be about fun and opportunities (such as travelling), not education.
None of these had general education as a goal. And those are the only examples of free newspapers I have seen repeatedly. -- But the situation may be different in other places.
People have been trying to do social engineering with print for hundreds of years and trying to educate the general populace to the scientific worldview for at least a century
I guess it is just a century or two that enough people are literate. And newspapers were considered powerful and dangerous; this is why censorship existed. (Though it does not prove that newspapers are efficient in education, specifically.)
The education of general population is typically done in schools. I think it works rather well… depending on what you compare it with. Compared with situation centuries ago, people can read and write, do some simple math, don’t believe in witches, etc. That’s not bad. It’s just not enough. Perhaps the schools could be more efficient (that is a separate discussion I would love to have once, but not now). But the side effect of free mandatory general education is that it stopped being a status symbol. And it’s usually boring. The newspaper could avoid some of that boredom, because people would read it voluntarily and individually; and the articles would not be followed by exams.
We probably think about different specific examples, so I will describe the ones I have seen.
Most of free papers I get contain advertising. Pictures of products, and prices. In most cases, nothing else. In some cases, a few short boring stories are included. I think that the goal here is to sell as much stuff as possible, and the publishers probably discovered that a legible content, beyond some bare minimum, does not really help sell more.
Then I get a free newspaper from our house caretaker. In this case the goal is to provide us some basic house-related info, and to remind us about how lucky we are to have this specific caretaker. This is the nearest example to free newspaper education I have seen, but it is extremely limited in scope.
Sometimes I get a municipal newspaper (usually when the municipal election is near), which provides some info about what happenned around us (culture, construction, problems) and gently reminds us about how much our municipal representatives did for us and why we should vote for them again.
At university I have seen some free newspaper for students, rather boring. My suspicion was that it was just a pretext to get some government funding, put money in editors’ pockets, and generate some output with random content. Anyway, it was supposed to be about fun and opportunities (such as travelling), not education.
None of these had general education as a goal. And those are the only examples of free newspapers I have seen repeatedly. -- But the situation may be different in other places.
I guess it is just a century or two that enough people are literate. And newspapers were considered powerful and dangerous; this is why censorship existed. (Though it does not prove that newspapers are efficient in education, specifically.)
The education of general population is typically done in schools. I think it works rather well… depending on what you compare it with. Compared with situation centuries ago, people can read and write, do some simple math, don’t believe in witches, etc. That’s not bad. It’s just not enough. Perhaps the schools could be more efficient (that is a separate discussion I would love to have once, but not now). But the side effect of free mandatory general education is that it stopped being a status symbol. And it’s usually boring. The newspaper could avoid some of that boredom, because people would read it voluntarily and individually; and the articles would not be followed by exams.