There’s A Reason We Don’t Subscribe

It snowed here in the Cincinnati area yesterday so I went out early to brush some snow off my car. Got it all scraped off and noticed, buried underneath about an inch of the white stuff, our Friday morning paper. So I grabbed it and carried it into the house. I had heard through Facebook and on the internet about the tsunami in Japan. I had seen the video of the cars being swept away and so this news I was already in tune too. What I didn’t know were the scores to last night’s Ohio University & Louisville games. So I unwrapped my paper, thinking I could get all the information about the latest news & scores out of it.

Unfortunately no.

Apparently this morning’s paper went to print long before the tsunami hit and there were no scores to be found for the 9:30pm tipoffs around the NCAA conference tournaments. So now I have to wonder…how does the local paper stay afloat? I know they have made cuts (like most businesses) and there are fewer newspaper journalists left. But this is a case in point about how we get our news and the availability of it. Here was the biggest national news story of the week happening in Japan and there was nothing. Here were 2 teams of local interest (although neither team is exactly “local”) and nothing. If anything, this goes to show why the local newspaper is slowly disappearing. Let me be the first to say that, as with the novel, there is something to actually “holding” a paper or a book. It just feels like you’re reading. But more & more that nostalgia starts to slip away and I’m thinking it’s pretty much a guarantee that the next generation will have nothing to do with it. Which is sad because there is something to be said about drinking morning coffee, having a bowl of cereal and reading the up-to-date news headlines. Unfortunately in these ever changing times, the newspaper cannot be considered up-to-date. I can get everything I need to know faster on my high speed internet connection that allows me to access information at the speed of light.

So…there really isn’t any need for newspapers anymore. They are as dated as Converse sneakers and KISS albums. But I gotta tell you…sometimes it’s nice to just slip them on and crank them up every now and then. And even though the paper might not be at the top of the news information heap, there is still something kind of relaxing about flipping through its pages and reading about yesterday’s happenings. It almost seems like time stands still a little. And for me…that’s fine. But not a good reason for me to pay for a weekly subscription. That might be a little TOO nostalgic.