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.
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3 comments:
I really like this post, Cathy. And I think it's relevant, even if for nothing else than to remind us of the fact that our students will grow up in a world where news and knowledge are considered and distributed differently.
Cathy,
That is certainly interesting. It makes a person consider not only newspapers but other types of hardcopy information like books or magazines. Along those same lines, I think of how we do research. I think of the way people used to have to do research by going to the library and digging through possibly hundreds of articles to get what they needed for a paper. I could not imagining having to do this. It is certainly convenient to have all this information at your fingertips but there is a sense of nostalgia in hard copies. My mom just recently subscribed to the Herald even though she reads it online. I thought that was kind of funny. I guess there is just something to be said for having something in your hand.
Another thing, it sort of reminds me too of the book Farenhiet 451 where they burn all of the books. We aren't exactly burning all of the books but they are being retired in a sense. Imagine if everything ceased to be in printed form. Who is to say that people couldn't go around rewriting history in any way they saw fit. I think this could have been part of George Orwell's fear when writing 1984, even though the internet wasn't in existence then.
Jennette,
The point you make about research makes me realize that I am only nostalgic for certain things. I received my undergrad in the pre-internet days when computers took up entire rooms. I do not miss how tedious and time consuming researching a topic was back then. I spent countless hours in the library thumbing through the card catalog. I am now finishing up my second semester at Winthrop and have yet to step foot in Dacus. I love the fact that the internet provides me with a wealth of information in just seconds. I could never imagine going back to the way things were. If that mean having to read my new online, so be it. If I had to choose between a newspaper or my laptop, my laptop would win almost everytime. Thanks for jolting me back into the 21st century.
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