Life Without Newspapers

This morning I got a taste of the future. I walked out the front door about 7 a.m. to the sounds of all sorts of birds chirping. It was a bright, sunny morning and the front yard was like a scene out of a Disney movie: young robins hopping around looking for worms, a couple of baby bluejays, a cardinal, the usual run of sparrows, all having a good time on our pesticide-free lawn; and two squirrels were chasing each other around the oak tree, going up and down, an awkward young rabbit who hadn't yet grown into his ears was munching on dandelion leaves (which is why I don't spray the dandelions--even though most all my neighbors are rather anal about their lawns, with not a weed in site, and perfectly mowed diagonal rows at least once, often twice a week). It was a peaceful, though trite, scene. Except for one thing.

The damn newspaper carrier failed do deliver my Sunday Kansas City Star.

During the week, I grab the paper, scan the headlines, and flip through the main section, stopping to quickly read what needs to be read. Then I check the editorial cartoon, Zippy and Non-Sequitur. On weekends I have the luxury of eating cereal at the table with coffee in a real cup, instead of driving to work eating a bagel and drinking coffee out of a thermal mug. On Sundays I spend even more time, luxuriating in the ability to read the entire paper slowly, going back sometimes to reread things or to a story I overlooked first time through.

This morning I was forced to drink my coffee at the computer desk, cereal-less, because if I put a bowl of cereal down on the desk the cat will jump up and splatter it all over the keyboard, or I will knock it off into the floor. The computer desk is not designed for eating and reading.

"No newspaper," you say, "what the heck, read the news on line."

Yeah, right. The barest of Yahoo headlines or the Kansas City Star's website? The Star's website sucks. You can find some of the stories there easily, but not everything. You can't just open a pdf that looks like the newspaper. What about the comics? I never have found those on the site. It takes forever to go through things on there, and who the hell wants to read a newspaper on a computer screen anyway?

After calling the automated complaint line and being reassured by a recorded voice that my paper would be delivered "as soon as possible," I got some more coffee and went to the NY Times site and began to read national news. Fine for awhile. But what had happened to our mayoral recall initiative? Again, the Star's website is so rotten it's not worth the effort for even a play story.

Fortunately, the carrier made good on the promise and I had a real newspaper in hand in a reasonable period of time and my Sunday morning was salvaged. Some would say at least on the Internet you don't have to worry about the paper not being delivered. Oh really? I think in the past 5 years this is only the second time we have not had the paper delivered. I don't recall the number of times the IP has been down, or so slow as to be unuseable, but it's been more than two.

As everything turns digital, newspapers will disappear. We'll get some facsimile of one on devices like Amazon's Kindle, or, no doubt, some very slick and expensive Apple product in the near future. It'll be more difficult to read than a full size real newspaper, or even a tabloid size one. And more importantly, only those who can afford devices or computer or Internet connections will now have access to "newspapers."

It may surprise my affluent middle class friends, but there are millions of people in this country who do not sit at computers all the time, who can't afford the luxury of high speed digital access. Newspaper subscriptions are still cheaper, and you can always find them laying around if you visit a coffee house or any typical breakfast cafe. A guy can find a newspaper for little or nothing. People read them and leave them.

Nobody's going to leave his Kindle laying around for the next person. And what if my wife and I both want to sit at the table and share the paper, as we always do on weekends? Do we have to buy two Kindles, or two computers?

I feel the same way about books. I read a book, my wife reads a book, and then we switch books. With a Kindle, we'd have to buy two.

But the real problem with dying newspapers is that if newspapers die, where are the web sites going to get the news? I guess eventually there will be groups of reporters who do investigative reporting and sell the stories to web sites, and there'll be professional qualifications to weed out the non-journalists...something very difficult to do on the web. Look at all the phony garbage out there now that passes for news on the web and on TV. Local investigative reporting, of course, will die. The long story in today's Star, when I finally got it, about how numerous deaths have been attributed to natural causes by cops and investigators, only to be found to be homicides when funeral home workers discovered bullet holes, smashed jaws, etc.--that type of reporting will be gone. As a result of the Star's bringing to light some mis-diagnosed murders, the cops are changing their procedures. Now every death outside a hospital will be investigated. Without the newspaper to shine the light on incompetency and bad practice, people have been, quite literally, getting away with murder.