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.
ReplyDeleteI delevered The Cape Breton Post as a teenager. First, it was delivered in the afternoon and then the paper moved to the morning. I had 146 papers to deliver each day. I did so listening to a walkman with cassette tapes filling my pockets. "You got any change?" was a common refrain on payday. It was awful to come home and find that I had one newspaper left (rarely) and I would get a call saying I forgot their house. (This was the 80s-90s so the song must have been good at that house as I walked by...) I worked for the newspaper in a different way but it made me love "news." My favourite section was the "Northside" section where I sometimes was featured for my prowess as a paperboy or my sailing in the summer.
ReplyDeleteYears later, when I found out about my birth family (I am adopted) I learned that my birth grandfather read the paper front to back each morning and I am delighted that he would have seen me even if he didn't know the connection.
Thanks for sharing your memories as they have helped me to recall my own!
I 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.
ReplyDelete