Everyday, I pass several newspaper boxes on my walk to my office. Two papers are local weeklies, one is the city daily. I scan the top stories, sometimes finding them interesting, but I am never propelled to buy a newspaper or to read the online versions of the papers. I am addicted to CNN.com for my daily news. I can't remember the last time I purchased a newspaper or even grabbed a freebie. I want to read everything online (and I'm older than most). I go to CNN for quick hits, to get a sense of what's going on and if there are any breaking stories I need to be aware of. That's it for news. I then have several other websites I rely on for reading material with a bit more gravitas.
There is a new site called Good, which I enjoy very much. I like that the writing is intelligent. I like the Tikkun blog. I'm neither Jewish nor particularly religious, but I like the heft behind the thinking and writing on Tikkun -- and I like its progressive slant. I don't go to Salon as much as I used to, nor to Slate. I get the NY Times table of content in my email every day, but might actually read a story once a week, if that.
I don't have a lot of time to devote to reading. I have a full-time job and a full-time family life. Much of my "pleasurable" reading is done with my young boys. In fact, I have read with my oldest several of the Percy Jackson sagas and The Chronicles of Narnia, as well as The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. All of these books have been very enjoyable. My young guy is reading The Fantastic Mr. Fox and other such stories.
I have a stack of my own books on the ready to be read. They include Homer's Odyssey, Hitler's Private Library, The DaVinci Code, The Best 10-Minute Plays of 1996, and many more. I recently read My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor, a fascinating read of this neuroscientist's descent into disability caused by a stroke and her recovery. I also just finished reading The De Vere Code, a book that purports to have found a code in the dedication to Shake-Speare's Sonnets that identifies Edward de Vere as the author. I happen to believe that de Vere is the actual author of all things Shakespeare, but I was not convinced of the case presented by Jonathon Bond in The De Vere Code.
My oldest son recently asked me what books I read as a kid. I could only remember one book: Miss Pickerel Goes to Mars. Growing up, our house was littered with magazines: Time, Newsweek, Life, Look, National Geographic, and two daily newspapers and the Sunday edition. Plus, we watched a lot of television.
Today, we don't have cable and TV watching is something special. The boys watch cartoons only occasionally. We will get a DVD from the library and watch it together on Friday evenings with homemade popcorn. We get National Geographic and The Progressive, but that is it. I would love to subscribe to Scientific American, Smithsonian Magazine, Psychology Today and other mags, but money is tight. We get leftover copies of The New Yorker, which I enjoy, especially the cartoons. But I could never subscribe to that magazine. Issues would pile up, unread, and I'd put a ton of pressure on myself to save every one until I've thoroughly digested every morsel of them. I can't take that kind of pressure. .I've read of a similar phenomenon called TiVo guilt, where people leave reams and reams of recorded material on their recorders hoping someday to be able to watch all of it. I wouldn't know. I don't have TiVo. I used to love to watch shows like 24, Numbers, CSI, Seinfeld, The Simpsons, Family Guy, and others. In today's world, I've had to make choices for what gets my time. TV lost.
As an editor for both a print and online media, I feel the pain of newspapers. But they have failed to remain relevant (whatever that term means: content, velocity). I cannot cure them. I don't know who can. My 8 year old goes right to the computer when he wants to learn something, generally to NFL.com or some other sports-oriented site. But he also knows how to use google, which he recently used to learn more about Greek gods, which are pervasive in the Percy Jackson sagas. He will never buy a newspaper. Well, he might buy one or two. But he will never be a subscriber. This is the future.
All I can tell the newspaper people is to take two gigabytes and call your IT team in the morning. That should cure your headaches.
(Image from McFarlaneusa.wordpress.com)
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