My grandparents subscribed to the Lexington Herald-Leader, which was not much of a newspaper before the Knight-Ridder purchase, but as a child I read the comics. My parents subscribed to the Kentucky edition of The Cincinnati Enquirer, and when I was in the seventh grade, my teacher, Ronnie Fern, had us pick a newspaper article each day and write something about it; from that I date my newspaper habit.
In the summers of 1968 to 1973, when I worked for the Flemingsburg Gazette, I read the Louisville Courier-Journal every morning at work and got to see what a fine newspaper was like. In college at Michigan State I was preoccupied with things apart from newspapering, and in graduate school at Syracuse I once subscribed briefly to the afternoon Herald-Journal and dropped it over the dumbest editorials I had ever seen.
But in 1980 a series of chances brought me to the copy desk of The Cincinnati Enquirer, where I found that I liked copy editing and was good at it; it was the discovery of what I was meant to do. And it was the start of a forty-five year habit of mornings with coffee and a daily newspaper; the national news, the foreign news, the local news, the editorials and op-eds, the features, the comics. Yes, there were other sources of news and entertainment, but the morning newspaper was the fixed spot of daily orientation. And yes, Boomer that I am, I was characteristic of my demographic; we all had the newspaper habit.
No more, I think. My colleague Steve Auerweck, once joked darkly that we should replace the "Obituaries" logo with "Subscriber Countdown." And indeed, for decades God has been harvesting the print readership. Still on this side of the turf, I finally dropped my subscription to The Baltimore Sun two and a half weeks ago because its new owner has fatally compromised what was left of its integrity.
Now, each morning, I make a pot of coffee for my wife and me and settle into a new routine. First The Guardian for world and and national news, then The Baltimore Banner for local and state news, then a series of online sites offering news and commentary. There is no longer a single fixed starting point, though I discover that I do not miss The Sun, which became a source of irritation and regret.
But I do miss the comics.
I’m with you about the newspaper habit. Started early & still going. I read several papers on line but I love to have a physical paper in my hand while I drink my morning coffee. My paper delivery driver told me he used to deliver hundreds a day and now he’s down to maybe a hundred. One of these days I imagine home delivery will disappear & I will mourn.
ReplyDeleteI, too, was a print junkie, growing up in New Jersey with the NY Herald Tribune. Jumped into the business as Editor (and sole writer/editor) of a small NH weekly after college, went back to school (Syracuse, like you) to really learn the business. From there to the New Bedford (MA) Standard-Times and on to The Evening Sun and The Sun. 40 years in the business in all. But I, too, have dropped The Sun’s print edition, and rarely click on the digital. I read the Sunday Times (print), The Banner and, most recently the Baltimore Brew. I grieve for the great Baltimore newspapers that have died or fallen into the wrong hands, and for the fine journalists who have bailed, or who continue to produce under bad management. We all deserve better, but I don’t know how that will come about.
ReplyDeleteI well remember being 12 years old in 1969, and walking across the street every night around 9 p.m. to Gee's candy store at the corner of 207th and Cooper, and buying the early edition of the next day's Daily News and and a chocolate egg cream for a quarter (8 cents for the paper, 17 cents for the egg cream). I had to read every story about my beloved New York Mets, and catch up on the headlines of the day. That, along with episodes of Lou Grant running the L.A. Trib, sparked my newspaper career, moving to Kentucky and reporting for The Courier-Journal in Louisville, The State Journal in Frankfort, and the Kentucky Post in Covington.
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ReplyDeleteI also miss the comics. For now, I've put together a bunch I like on a website (I use GoComics, but there may be others), and I cross my fingers every day that they will still be there; I don't know if they can survive the demise of print.
ReplyDeletegocomics.com has been my staple since I stopped reading our local newspaper years ago (I became more liberal; the newspaper didn't).
ReplyDeleteSorry; the gocomics link was from me. For some reason, Google doesn't like me.
ReplyDeleteI inherited my brother’s afternoon paper route in 1962. I was 11; he started to play basketball at school. The one thing I was happy about was that the paper (The Hartford Times) was after school; the alternative (The Hartford Courant) was a morning paper. I hated getting up that early. I had close to seventy customers. When I collected every Saturday, some “adults” forgot they were customers and bitched about paying.
ReplyDeleteWhen the Times introduced a “green stripe edition” and guaranteed delivery by 5:30, with closing stock report, I tried to tell our route manager that nobody asked us newsboys about the change; when I suggested that we strike for a raise, he gave me my first lesson in labor relations: “kid, ya can’t strike—you’re an independent contractor...”
But with the money I earned, I later financed my brother’s first motorcycle ( a Honda Super 90) and said he didn’t have to pay any interest, he just had to teach me to drive it....
I took a physical paper until five or so years ago. My kids were at the impressionable age where I would expect them to at least pick up the daily comics habit. It never happened. They are readers, but not of that. They are familiar with a few strips that moved into other media: Peanuts and Garfield most notably. But the idea of picking up the daily paper, even if it was sitting on the table in front of them, to read the comics never stuck. To the extent that they follow any sort of equivalent, it is entirely web-based. O tempore, o mores!
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