Sad Day for Newspaper

Tomorrow, March 17, will be the last edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. This will make Seattle a one newspaper town. Although we live in an area where one-newspaper towns are common (Rock Hill Herald, Charlotte Observer), many large cities have more than one newspaper. This gives the residents of the city more options and ergo more balanced news reporting. Between stints as a chemist, my father was a newspaper distributor in Chicago, and each day he brought home the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Daily News and a small local daily paper, The Daily Calumet. I was a paper girl when I was young, and I had a double-route. I guess you can say that newspapers are in my blood. Even with the news updated minute-by-minute on the web, I still read the newspaper every day. I love the smell of the newspaper and the black residue it leaves on my fingers!

I know this has nothing to do with what we have been reading or discussing all semester in Dr. Pope's class, but I thought it was worth mentioning. Part of me feels sad. I am not sure if I am mourning the demise of the newspaper or because I feel like a dinosaur. I expect teenagers to tell me to get with the times and get my news off the web or cell phone.

This is worth noting especially for the Tuesday night class and the students who are earning their MAT in Social Studies. Both my high schooler and middle schooler have had to bring in current event articles from the newspaper - not from the internet. This is a traditional assignment that may fall to the wayside as daily newspapers disappear.