My step-father was a journalist and he would bring home five newspapers every day. After supper we would all spread out in the living room and begin reading them. We were a very well informed family! I even learned words that my mother didn’t think I was ready to learn. When I was about 10-years old, one night as I was reading, without looking up I asked, “What does ‘abortion’ mean?” It was one of the few times my mother was speechless and I think her answer was something to the effect that she would tell me when I was older. She never did.
In those days when you picked up the paper the news was well, “new.” You hadn’t heard any of the stories or heard any of the tragedies that occurred the day before or even as late as the evening before. Sometimes the nightly broadcast news came up with a gem of a piece of news that was too late for publication in the print version of the news. But, on average most of the news in the morning or evening paper was new news. This was true up until recently.
Thirsting for information in a more timely manner, I have signed up for the New York Times online as well as CNN streaming news. Even AOL has streaming news but it is usually of the gossipy type about Hollywood’s who’s who in who’s bed. CNN sticks to the more traditional news like where is Hilliary Clinton, or what is the first dog, Bo, (or is it Beau?) doing. Or, where did Barack disappear to in the middle of the night? The New York Times is well, The New York Times. The really great thing however, is that most of the internet news is almost in “as it happens” mode. I go to bed knowledgeable of what happened up to about 9 p.m. that day.
Thus, when I pick up the morning newspaper I’ve already seen all of the national news online. Even the local obituaries are online as they are filed at our www.delawareonline.com which is the electronic version of my paper The News Journal. Which also means I can even get the local news about two hours, or less, after it happens. And, sometimes I even get almost instantaneous news from Facebook. It was from Facebook that I learned of the shooting of a policeman in Georgetown fifteen minutes after it happened. And it is from Facebook that I can even get some of the Op Ed columns early on.
And yet, I still pay about $20/month to get that filled-with-old-news newspaper. Why, I wonder? Well, there are the comics to read and “Dear Abby” and the bridge column and my horoscope. Important stuff. But I think the real reason I still get the newspaper is to do the Cryptic Byword puzzle and the crossword puzzle. I just haven’t figured out a way to write down those answers online yet. (Sigh), maybe someday.