What's Black and White and "Red" All Over?

Well, the newspaper, of course, silly.

Unfortunately, our newspaper is gone. The Ann Arbor News closed its doors a couple weeks ago, and we already miss it. I know this is the way that a lot of newspapers are going, but I don't like it.

I remember starting out college in the journalism program, and listening to one professor tell us what the future of journalism was going to be like. In print journalism, everything would be on the computer, including the daily newspaper. Not to date myself, but back in my college days we didn't have the internet yet. Cell phones weren't even a thought. So when he said that everything would be on the computer, I wondered, how is all the information going to get to my computer? On a floppy disk? Would this floppy disk be delivered to houses everyday? But I mostly thought about reading the paper on a computer. Would it be on a computer similar to the computer in the crowded labs that I spent countless days in front of, writing the required paper for every class, and waiting in line to pick up my dot-matrix print-out? I couldn't imagine spending my "free time" as an adult reading things on the computer. It was enough torture during my college days.

To me, and apparently to other people who protested the closing of the newspaper here, the newspaper needs to be held, and smelled, and heard. Holding the thin sheets of newsprint, smelling the fresh ink on the pages, and hearing the crinkling of the pages is all part of the ritual for me. I grew up with this ritual, and I miss it when it's not part of my Sunday.

As kids, we would grab the money needed and run over to the man selling the papers in the vestibule of our church. We would always buy both The Chicago Tribune, as well as The Chicago Sun-Times. The comics were different in both papers, so it was a bonus for us kids. I never understood just what my mom and dad were reading about. I thought it looked so boring, all of those words crammed into columns with few pictures on the pages. But the comics were a different story - I could laugh at Charlie Brown's latest antics, and try to do the puzzles. (I never understood the detective comics like Brenda Starr, but they were cool to look at). My dad would sometimes read the comics to us, and use different voices for the characters. It was a different medium, but it was the idea of listening to the story that I loved (and still love).

Fast forward to after college, when I lived with Chris and we would have the Sunday paper delivered. On Sunday mornings, most often we would just step over the paper on our way out to breakfast with friends. And then once we got back, we would pick up the paper on our way back inside, split up the sections and read for a couple hours.

When I moved to Ann Arbor, we had the Ann Arbor News delivered. Although the paper wasn't as thick as the Tribune or Sun-Times and had a lot of AP articles rather than ones written by reporters here, I still enjoyed the comfortable ritual of reading it on Sundays.

Now the majority of the paper has been moved online (I guess my prof wasn't so crazy) and there is a paper that is delivered to our house twice a week. And that paper? It's like a neighborhood paper, with human-interest stories. If you want to know who was in the park this weekend flying kites while walking their dog, this paper is for you. How about the latest festival pictures? You got it. The sports section yesterday had an article about the Rec League's baseball program.

We don't even read it anymore. It has gone from our driveway to our recycling bin without being opened. There is always the Detroit Free Press, which we will probably subscribe to eventually. And there are always articles we can read online. I guess this will just add to my computer reading time. At least I can do that at home on the couch.