Why and How I Read the Newspaper

Of all the means of communication at my disposal, the two I enjoy most are standing out by the side of the road--my mailbox and my Gazette box. Unfortunately, the mailbox is mute for the most part lately. Except for letters from an old man who lives in a motel in Connecticut, who no longer drives and who doesn't own a computer, all I get is bills and circulars.

The demise of the personal letter and its replacement by e-mail with all the baggage e-mail brings--poor spelling, lack of capital letters and punctuation, and lack of thought given to content and style--is disheartening, but I still look forward to getting my Gazette every morning. And it came as no surprise to me that the Gazette was named best newspaper in its class by the New York State Associated Press Association recently. All of the dire predictions of the demise of the newspaper, like those about the death of the book, seem premature. While e-mail has almost destroyed letter writing, newspapers have survived the advent of television and radio, and after a decade of the internet, appear to be surviving that as well. In some ways, the internet has already enhanced the newspaper, as people are able to subscribe to on-line editions. However, it is the print edition that I am addicted to. Besides sugar and cream, it is the third ingredient I add to my coffee every morning.

Reading the Opinion Page

If it's Sunday, Tuesday or Thursday, I usually start by reading Carl Strock's column. He is my favorite newspaper columnist, except when he trespasses onto the topic of religion. Then I read the editorial page. Like the late Molly Ivins, when Mona Charen is the columnist, I only have to read the headline to know what she is going to say. If the day's columnist is Richard Cohen, then I have to read the whole column. Mr. Cohen thinks through every issue carefully and his opinion is often surprising.

One of My Favorite Pastimes - Reading the Obituaries

Next I read the local news, followed by the national news. I then turn my attention to the obituaries. Years ago I never read the obituaries. But my wife got me reading them. She reads them everyday because she wants to make sure no one she knows has died.

In the past, obituaries were somewhat boring, but as family members often write them now, they actually are a source of pleasure, considering the event they are memorializing. In fact, a few have been so good, I have clipped and saved them. Here are a couple of my favorite excerpts from obituaries that appeared in the Gazette.

"R. was an avid reader and as a young adult would climb into the unheated attic under the dim light of a single bulb and would read the Bible, several chapters at a time, until he reached the last cover."

"She gained notoriety for loading an old shopping cart with children's books and ambulating through the poor sections of town reading books to underprivileged children...Also during this period...books disappeared from the public library never to be seen again..."

Reading the Sports and Comics Sections

Even though I played basketball and ran cross country in high school, I rarely read the sports section. The same is true of the comics. When I was a kid, we lived close enough to our elementary school so that two of my brothers and I were able to go home for lunch. Our newspaper had a full page of comics and a partial page of comics. The first one home got the full page, the second one the partial page, and the last one, of course, had to just wait patiently for the other two to finish.

I was disappointed when Gary Larson stopped doing The Far Side because that was one comic I did read regularly. Mother Goose And Grimm and Lio sometimes fill the bill, but they are not quite the same. But if the comics don't make me laugh, Annie's Mailbox often does. We take ourselves so seriously, but letters to Annie reveal what a flawed species we are.

The Newspaper vs. Television

I quit watching television news a long time ago. The amount of material in thirty minutes of television news would only fill a page or two of the newspaper. Each day's newspaper, however, is the equivalent of a short book. The quantity and variety in a newspaper are just two of the advantages it has over its competitors.

A television broadcast is also linear. You have to sit through everything, including commercials, to view what you want. With a newspaper, you can pick and choose what you want to read. In that respect, a newspaper is more like the internet than any other medium.

A friend of mine told me recently that she got rid of her cable television and her newspaper as cost cutting measures. I got rid of cable television a long time ago. Cutting my expenses was only one reason. But I will never get rid of the newspaper. If I were ever that pressed for money, I'd get rid of my morning coffee first.