Death knells of newspapers are worrisome to those of us who love ink

Published 1:22 pm Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Most likely, you are reading this while holding The Beachcomber.

Do me a favor and feel that newsprint with your fingers. Smell the ink on that paper. Notice its rough edge on top, the little tiny holes punched into the bottom quarter inch. Rustle the paper and snap it into shape. Relish the sensation. Peruse the news. Think about how long the habit of reading the paper has been part of your life.

My grandma got The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. My folks, The Seattle Times. They had different comics, so on Sunday, I wanted to ride my bike to Gram’s, spread Puck’s colored pages across her living room rug and catch up on Blondie and Dagwood, Prince Valiant and other favorites. Eventually I read more sections of both papers, and loved every minute of discovery found in them.

Time went on. I went away to a small college and got a journalism major as a roommate. She became editor. Our very small dorm room was stacked with newspapers. (She started me on the habit of keeping them until reading them, even if they get a day or a week old. There’s inevitably something in there you need to know.) At the end of two years, we both changed schools.

I graduated with a degree in communications from Washington State University, where I was on staff at The Daily Evergreen. She got her master’s in journalism at Columbia.

We decided to launch ourselves on Seattle, but jobs were scarce. She pumped gas, then got on with the Seattle bureau of the Associated Press. I waited tables, then got an intern gig at the P.I.

Our house filled up with more newspapers. My deal ran out, but I found employment at The Seattle Times promotion department.

She got into a lawsuit with the AP for not wearing a bra. Won. Took the money and went traveling around the world.

While riding a bike through Egypt, she was notified that her AP reporting had been nominated for a Pulitzer.

She stopped traveling in Amsterdam to report on The Hague for the Financial Times. I went into advertising copywriting. When we visited each other (she never chided me for “selling out”), we carefully stepped around that precious stack of to-be-read newspapers next to the kitchen table.

More time went on. I, to Vashon, and she to London, where she gave up printed press to be a reporter at CNN. Weirdly enough, I became the one with the byline in print — The Beachcomber, The Ticket and The Loop. It seemed there are often things that need to be reported on or talked about.

For example, I was just looking at the March 1 issue of The Washington Post, which I lugged back from a trip East. (Hadn’t finished the front section.) And on A4 is an article about the demise of newspapers. The end of the 150-year-old Rocky Mountain News, for heaven’s sake!

The fact that the Miami Herald newsroom staff has gone from 420 to 260. That legendary paper did extraordinary, in-depth reporting, going way beyond to get to the bottom of truth and fact.

The editor said the difference a good newspaper makes to the quality of life in any community is vital. It’s like a healthy heart. The article listed presses that have recently stopped, hearts that have stopped beating and a Web site for updates on newspaper closings, layoffs and bankruptcies: newspaperdeathwatch.com.

Papers that bounced onto porches and into lives. Papers that printed birth, wedding and death announcements. Papers that told the score, endorsed candidates, honored graduates. Papers that screamed, WAR DECLARED! DEWEY WINS! ONE GIANT STEP FOR MANKIND.

I am emotional about newspapers and their place in my life in a way my child never will be. But he will never know what he missed.

He reads Calvin & Hobbs or Farside in paperback anthologies. He catches snippets of news on TV and online. And steps over the pile next to the kitchen table.