Newsprint
I started reading the paper again.
I’ve got a long history with the daily newspaper. I started early, in college, with the excellent Des Moines Register (and the magnificent Donald Kaul). When I moved to Minneapolis I read the perfectly adequate Star-Tribune nearly daily, and at one point had a large number of weird newspaper articles taped to the side of the fridge (“Man Lives in Hole for Eight Years”).
Moving to New York City is when my newspaper consumption kicked into a higher gear. At the time I moved (1984) the glory days of NYC newspapers were beginning to wane, but there were still four big newspapers around: the paranoid, sensationalist, Yankee-loving NY Post, the more moderate, Mets-leaning Daily News (my personal daily paper for years), and the venerable NY Times, where I went for hard news and the glory that is the NY Times Sunday paper (I associate the Sunday paper with coffee and lazy mornings, reading the paper in bed). In the last several years of my life there, NY Newsday appeared on the scene and quickly became my favorite (it went defunct just as I left town).
I’d usually buy the paper at a bodega, every day, blinking as I awoke, coffee brewing in my apartment as i plopped down my quarters. For a time I bought my paper as a busy NYC newsstand that looked like it came straight out of a movie. Sometimes I’d buy one from those squat old newspaper vending machine, digging frantically in my pocket for change as I approached.
Often I’d go through several papers a day.
When I moved to Colorado I got lazy, and then lazier. The lazy part was subscribing to the reasonably adequate Denver Post, rather than seeking it out at a newstand or vendor. The lazier part was when I switched to a Sunday paper subscription only, and finally quit subscribing altogether.
I quit subscribing because I had quit reading the paper. Life gets busy, and the internet is right there on your phone, spewing headlines at least 12 hours more up-to-date than the ones on newsprint. Newspapers began to appear quaint and unnecessary. My Dad subscribed to the local paper in the years he lived with us, and he’d read it front to back, but I’d use it primarily for the calendar of events, when I used it at all.
My wife and I recently got sidelined at the grocery store for a discount offer for the local paper. We signed on, Wednesdays and Sundays and some other day we can’t quite figure out.
At first I didn’t think it would take.
The internet is faster and more up-to-date and the headlines are a doom-swipe away. I can choose my news sources and compare disparate narratives. I don’t use coupons. I rarely read the opinion page or human interest stories.
But I’m beginning to remember the older rhythms of reading the paper, almost like muscle memory returning. Looking up and down the page, searching for an article to tickle your interest, and, once reading to the jump (“con’t on pg. 5”), making the decision to leap deeper into the paper to finish the article, or move on. It’s less control than the internet gives you, more control than TV news (which I never watch).
I find I’m learning to enjoy the march of the sections; front page to business to sports (during baseball season anyway) to the climax of the paper, the Lifestyle section, where, after consuming a human interest story or two, you get, in rapid succession, the astrology section, the Jumble, the comics, and (the climax of the climax!) the advice columns (we’re big fans of the advice column in this house).
I’m reading most of the comics I used to read in my newspaper heyday. Sally Forth. LuAnn. Pearls Before Swine, Rhymes With Orange. Sadly, no more Calvin and Hobbes, no more Far Side. The characters are mostly ageless; even in the family-centered ones, the kids tend grow to teenagerhood and then stop, forever adolescent.
I don’t read the opinion section. The Gazette is a somewhat conservative paper, but on the opinion pages they go full-bore right wing. I glance at the lead articles and immediately hear my Dad’s voice in my head, bitching about politics and the wrong headedness of the local mindset. It’s nice to have the reminder of him, a few times a week.
My wife and I sat on the deck last weekend and read the Sunday paper as we drank our coffee. It reminded me of those NY Times Sunday papers of old (albeit a LOT shorter), the simple joys of trading the sections of the paper back and forth on a lazy Sunday morning with someone you love. I am thankful for the continuity, down through the decades, paper to paper, Des Moines Register to New York Times to Colorado Springs Gazette.
I have a framed copy of the Des Moines Register on August 9th, 1974. The headline: NIXON RESIGNS. It was a formative event in my high school years, and colored my politics for the rest of my life. I keep it on the wall as a reminder and a cautionary tale, one that became disturbingly relevant in the last several years.
The world keeps turning, and I keep showing up to read about it.
Peace.
You know the drill:
June’s story: Feral
May’s story: Nine Lives
April’s story: Prince Albert in a Can
March’s story: Fuck, Marry, Kill
February’s story: Veronica Scissors
My first novel, Life Under Water
My erotic flash fiction series, Serious Moonlight (as J G Cain)
Thanks, Jeff. Another lovely piece. I had a lot of those same routines (Sundays with the New York Times), but like you I now read my phone. Since moving to Claremont, Lisa and I have discovered the joy of our weekly local paper. So badly written. Such terrible photos. No apparent effort to edit (or proofread!). It shows up in our mailbox on Fridays and is now part of our Saturday morning ritual. Thanks again to reminding me of my love for the printed page.