Reading things online, whether it's on a computer or a phone, is certainly quick and convenient. And while I have accustomed myself pretty well to electronic media, I've always felt it deprives us of important things.
Comfort and convenience, for example. A book, magazine, or even an e-reader travel pretty well and can be used wherever you want them. But a desktop roots you to a desk; a laptop or tablet is a chunk to carry and needs wireless connection; and a phone is just too small - these devices may be OK for the person who thinks of reading in terms of sound bites, but they all fall short if you think of reading in terms of an hour rather than a couple of minutes.
Browsing is also more difficult. Even on a Kindle, if you want to flip back a few pages to look at something you just read, it's laborious to do so. But worse yet is the news. The advantage of a newspaper is that you can scan through the whole thing, so if there's something there you find interesting, you will find it, even if it's not a topic that you'd ordinarily think to consider as one of your "areas of interest."
On a webpage, you're always at the mercy of someone else's judgment of what's worth featuring. This was brought home to me Sunday, when I blogged about an article on the National Zoo, and wanted to set a link to it in my post. Since it had been the cover story in the Washington Post Magazine, I expected to find it fairly prominently featured on the WP's website. No such luck; not only wasn't it prominent, but two very complete perusals of the whole page revealed that this item wasn't there at all. In the end, I had to search for it (and found it) but it's evident that if I were relying on the Post's online presence for news, I would have missed this one entirely.
Too bad, because the selective nature of the website only reinforces the modern tendency to read only about things we already know about, and opinions that we already agree with.