Stop The Presses!
The demise of tangible media
Movie of the Week: The Front Page (1974); Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau; Directed by Billy Wilder
One of my fondest childhood memories was the Sunday paper, especially in winter in front of the fire. Dad would drive out to the mailbox at the crack of dawn to pick up our copies of the Houston Chronicle, San Antonio Light and Austin American-Statesman. Dallas papers were not allowed in our house, unless there was a specific reason to get a copy of the Dallas Morning News, and the New York Times was strictly forbidden to soil our home under any circumstances.
I would remove all the inserts and flyers, set aside the weekly glossy magazines, and stack the sections in order, then lie on the rug with a cup of hot chocolate and page through the pile of cotton rag sheets, until my fingers were black with rub-off and my sinuses were full of that peculiar smell of ink oil. My reward for plowing through the news and features was the comics section, which at that time was the only part of the paper printed in color, and only on Sunday at that.
I miss the comics section.
Because Dad was a politician, I had occasion to meet a lot of journalists, some quite famous. As the oldest child, I was allowed to sit quietly in the corner and listen to the adults talk, and at the end I was granted a minute or two of Q&A.
My memories of those curious characters called journalists are of ghostly figures in a shroud of cigarette smoke, with a bourbon in one hand and a notepad in the other. One particular character was Jane Ely, a large and imposing figure with a raspy voice, who seemed to be enveloped in a perpetual cloud of smoke, even in the rare moments when she wasn’t smoking.
I loved the whole world of newspapers, from the news room to typesetting, to papier-mâché, to molten lead, to high-speed web press, to cutters/folders, to the dock, and distribution. I did a brief stint at the Albuquerque Journal-Tribune, before moving on to electronic media, but the rawness and excitement of print stuck with me, like ink black on my fingertips.
The news business is one of those gray zones in life that everyone needs, but no one likes. Terms like “muck raking” and “yellow journalism” and “tabloid trash” belie a love-hate relationship with the industry. The word “BREAKING” has become all but meaningless. Once reserved for stories like the Tet Offensive or Man On The Moon, with 200-point headlines above the fold, “BREAKING” now appears on every Cat In The Tree story that comes along.
Now-a-days everyone with an internet connection facies himself a journalist, but in those days one earned the title. The way the news business used to work was a “cub” was stuck on the city desk, learning how to write a standard report from the police blotter — answer the interrogatives, who-what-when-where-how. If you were good, you’d get a by-line and be allowed to answer “why”.
If you earned your chops as a reporter, you’d work up to journalist, the cream of the crop who were given the time and budget to dig into the big stories. Journalists were the ones who took down political dynasties, exposed corruption and ended up with book deals and movie rights.
My conceit is that I fancy myself in the remaining classification — a columnist. These were the writers whose experience and turn of phrase earned them a syndicated feature, usually 800 to 1,000 words in the Lifestyle/Features section of the paper, on a daily or weekly basis. In Houston, we had Lynn Ashby and Leon Hale. Nationally, we had William Safire, Dave Barry and Vin Suprynowicz.
The columnists were my favorites. There, in front of the fire, they provided the color and context for the news. They were the cooling down lap before hitting the comics. I loved the way they wrapped a little history, some humor and a couple of deeper insights around the blaring headlines. They made the world seem a little less threatening, and not quite as dire as the BREAKING headlines.
I miss newspapers. They were tangible history that couldn’t be altered. They hung from nifty racks at the library. They could be saved for posterity. They made great packing material and bird cage liners. They were handy wrapping paper for those sudden gifting occasions. They made spiffy cones for carnival snacks and chippers. They lingered on your clothes and fingers, and in your sinuses. And they started the fires by which you read the Sunday stack.
Electronic media have perfected immediacy, but newspapers perfected permanency. I still buy newspapers for the big stories I don’t want revised or amended after the fact, but the new latex inks just aren’t the same as the old mineral oil and lamp black. The paper is more brittle now, having lost the organic feel of cotton rag. Spot colors and full color plates are de rigueur, rather than reserved for those really spectacular images and editions.
For centuries, newspapers were our window on the world, but the electronic media have become windows on us. Media no longer exist to inform and entertain, they serve to collect and monetize.
We lost a vital piece of our culture with the newspaper, and the general quality of writing and news gathering has declined sharply. On yes, and the word “BREAKING” has been CNNed into oblivion.
Laying on the polyester rug with a laptop in front of the virtual video fire on Sunday morning, with a cup of sugar-free hot chocolate, just doesn’t cut the mustard.
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We had the Miami Herald and the Ft. Lauderdale News my dad brought home every day. Dave Barry in the Herald's Parade Sunday insert magazine. Can't say I miss the ink stains, since eating while reading it was a bad habit. Patrick Lawrence's Journalists and their Shadows is an excellent insider's take on becoming a reporter, up from cub to columnist.
Nice follow up to your Woebegone piece. My grandfather got two papers delivered in his little box by the farm fence. The Washington Post, and Grit. Reading your essay helped me recall there are a couple of rites of passage related to newspapers. One is when you can finally hold it and organize the folds to read it casually without pages getting discombobulated. Another is being able to complete the crossword puzzle. Newspapers also forced you to be skillful at mental cataloguing: "gotta remember to read the rest of this article when I get to D2." I like to think news was 'better' back then, more honest, although I cannot find any logical reasons to think so.