The Last Newspaper

I’ve stopped getting the newspaper. No longer will it hit the door at three in the morning, no matter the weather. My morning pattern will have to change from my cup of coffee, bottle water and thirty minutes glancing through yesterday’s news.

As a news junkie, I watch it on television morning and night, but the past few months I realized everything I read in the newspaper, I already know.

So I’ve stopped the delivery of a printing industry that propelled my career for nearly forty years.

Now I’ll never know if Funky Winkerbean is dead from his accident. I’ll never know if the little dog Sassy will get back (of course he will, it’s Mark Trail). Since I don’t follow any teams, especially those losers the Flying Squirrels, I won’t get the scores. The weather I can get on television 24 hours a day or just go outside. I’ll not get Michael Paul Williams diversity slant on the news or hear about how the city jail is over populated and hot. I won’t be able to follow the stocks as they drop or see who is dead. I’ll not see the list of cars, houses, and other cheap stuff in the classifieds full of legal notices of foreclosures and no job listings. I won’t be getting the reviews of Dana and her preferences in what she likes to eat or Melissa’s poor writing on the music industry missing the local groups altogether. The same advertisers line the right side of the pages but without wanting windows, children clothing, or automobiles, I won’t miss them. Even Sunday’s coupon, which I don’t use, will not be missed.

And the milk-toast editorials by Todd are a waste of space. To quote: “God Bless America, America Bless God.”

So while the newspaper works hard shifting titles to Revenue Development, Targeted Solutions, and Content Development while bringing in new faces and surveying the public, it all comes down to how much does it cost to present yesterday’s news to the public.

I get faster news from Facebook than I did from the newspaper.

I’ll still support and tote the newspaper to others. It has a large staff gathering lots of information, viewed and reviewed by many eyes, then trimmed down to fit the space available, before being sent out to Hanover for ink to be pressed to recycled paper, bundled and delivered at 3 in the morning.

I can not rationalize paying, though it is a cheap product it is still not worth the cost, to support a 45 year old high school drop-out living with his mother who talked for five hours about his nasty neighbors, feeding squirrels, doing weed, and 60’s rock bands.

So if a newspaper had something I really wanted to read, something that interested me, something I learned only by reading the newspaper, I’d buy it.