30-year and 15-year mortgages dip to record lows

The 30- and 15-year fixed-rate mortgages (FRM) reached record lows this week, Freddie Mac reported today.  (The 30-year fixed-rate survey began in 1971, and the 15-year began in 1991.)

It’s an old refrain: Can print survive the Internet?

While Barnes & Noble now is for sale, so are its books--online, of course, above.

Maybe I’m just an old crank when it comes to my current musings about the challenges facing magazines, newspapers and printed books.

Though I live on my computer, I come from a print background.

In college, I was editor of the newspaper and, at the same, time a professional journalist with the long-defunct Hartford Times.  I went on to become a stringer for Time magazine while getting my graduate degree in communications at Stanfrod, edited a magazine for public information officers in the Navy, became a national writer for the Associated Press and was a Money magazine writer.

So, my affection for print is hardly surprising.  Yet three recent events and one insight have brought the issue (no pun) to the top of my mind.