{"id":3903,"date":"2012-10-26T11:59:45","date_gmt":"2012-10-26T16:59:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/?p=3903"},"modified":"2012-10-26T22:52:56","modified_gmt":"2012-10-27T03:52:56","slug":"the-paper-is-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2012\/10\/the-paper-is-back\/","title":{"rendered":"The Paper’s Back"},"content":{"rendered":"

The newspaper is here. It’s unopened in its yellow rain bag, middle of the driveway. I’m savoring the moment, the anticipation.<\/p>\n

\"Northwest<\/a>
Images scavenged from www.ozarksunbound.com & www.nwaonline.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Also, I wanted to write my rationale first.<\/p>\n

This being Northwest Arkansas, it’s really two newspapers bundled. If this was elsewhere in America, it would be one newspaper with a zoned local (or hyperlocal) section. The two corporations that in 2009 created this amalgam soon may admit the latter — four zoned editions for the main cities therein — is what it is.<\/p>\n

I missed the damned thing, the daily doorstop.<\/p>\n

It’s been seven weeks. Eight weeks ago yesterday I was downsized along with several of my longtime buddies at the Northwest Arkansas edition of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.<\/em> That was a Thursday noon; the family health policy ended 36 hours later, midnight Friday (shifting to a costly but complete COBRA<\/a> plan for those who wanted it). A week later my paycheck-deducted newspaper subscription stopped.<\/p>\n

Had a funny phone conversation with the circulation dispatcher that day:<\/p>\n

I didn’t get my paper.”
\n“I’ll check. I see that you were terminated so your delivery ended, too.” (Pause)
\n“I figured; the carriers have been wonderful our 14 years here. Don’t you want to ask me if I want to buy a regular subscription?” (Longer pause)
\n“Uh, sure, but I need to go check.”
\n“Don’t bother. I have to leave. Maybe I’ll subscribe later.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

About a week later, my former newspaper’s telemarketing kicked in. They have phoned every single night (!) and with the help of Caller ID, I didn’t answer. This past Monday I picked up. What I wanted was Wednesday, Friday and Sunday delivery. With any subscription the online paywall drops, giving me complete access. Nope. All that’s offered is daily, Sunday-only or Friday-Saturday-Sunday. I said OK. this way I get Saturday’s longstanding gem, the Otus the Head Cat<\/a> satirical column.<\/p>\n

My rate comes to about 40 cents a paper. The per-unit feels a tad high, but if it helps keep wages flowing to my newsroom pals still clocking in, what can I say?<\/p>\n

Research<\/h3>\n

These seven weeks comprised an experiment on myself. Would I miss a delivered daily print newspaper?<\/p>\n

Conclusion: Yes, but not in an old fogy way.<\/p>\n

I’ve gotten news. I check news websites several times a day, including those of newspapers. I’ve grown to honor the websites of local TV stations with their brief but sufficient text reports (and they’re largely free of typos!) — still only watch a total of 15 minutes of local newscasts on television in any week. I’ve become an even bigger fan of my region’s TheCityWire.com<\/a> for its variety and integrity.<\/p>\n

Fogies would miss the smearing ink on paper that’s yellowed a bit by the next day, or comics, TV listings or other “lite” bits. Not me. That’s all available online.<\/p>\n

What was lacking for me was the easy-to-comprehend summary of events of the preceding period of time. I didn’t specify the “preceding day” to include weekly magazines. Newsweek<\/em> ends its print edition in two months.<\/p>\n

To be precise I missed specifics on whatever happened in the last sessions of Congress before it recessed. I missed learning of the day-to-day battles in the Syrian civil war.<\/p>\n

Online with just a little effort I find sufficient local, national and world news. But I know I am missing chunks.<\/p>\n

Online with zero<\/em> effort I can learn the facts behind whatever was attracting controversy that minute. Controversy these days is a confection manufactured by pundits, opinions with built-in obsolescence of 72 hours.<\/p>\n

Which is to say, this year’s farm bill<\/a> was missing in action on the window to the world that is the Web. Were it not for local friends posting on Facebook about Syria<\/a>, I wouldn’t know how Assad is faring. I see major news online of course, so he must still be hanging in, not yet hanging.<\/p>\n

This Brick isn’t really about me, except as an example. I am a news hound, a junkie, both by nurture (parents passionate for information and reading) and by a vocation of over three decades, including 10 years as International Editor of the aforementioned Demzette<\/em>. Access should be fairly easy for me.<\/p>\n

But what about others? Americans must be growing more ignorant with every passing month. I know what to look for. A presidential foreign policy debate at best is academic to people who do not have direct ties to the U.S. military and at worst their knowledge is limited to well-distributed biased manipulations of facts — by all sides.<\/p>\n

The best places online for news remain nytimes.com (though it’s got a partial paywall), washingtonpost.com and the better British outlets — I favor guardian.co.uk and bbc.co.uk.<\/p>\n

We have to want to find information to get it.<\/p>\n

Even the best websites are chaotic nestings of confusion. Partly that’s a case of what-do-you-expect from huge news media: They have so much to offer. Yet I suspect these Internet home pages are more designed for their executives to see every single division that their budgets are expending. That’s a priority over the convenience of even savvy viewers.<\/p>\n

Try to use the damnable mobile applications. Most of the media companies have created apps for smartphones and tablet computers that are slow-loading, haphazardly indexed and missing content. I have loaded several news apps on my iPad. I avoid them in favor of squinting at these outlet’s conventional websites. Exception: The New York Times<\/em> app is complete and easy, but nytimes.com remains easier.<\/p>\n

So now it sits on the breakfast table, the Northwest Arkansas edition of the Demzette<\/em> rolled with the Fayetteville zoned edition still titled the Northwest Arkansas Times<\/em>. I’ll resume stowing the oblong yellow bags in the car as poop grabbers for when I take the dogs out.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2012 Ben S. Pollock<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The newspaper is here. It’s unopened in its yellow rain bag, middle of the driveway. I’m savoring the moment, the anticipation. Also, I wanted to write my rationale first. This being Northwest Arkansas, it’s really two newspapers bundled. If this was elsewhere in America, it would be one newspaper with a zoned local (or hyperlocal) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-spin"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":120,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/08\/short-term-newspaper-memory\/","url_meta":{"origin":3903,"position":0},"title":"Short-term (newspaper) memory","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"August 21, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Sunday, Aug. 21, 2005. Saturday, in The Morning News of Northwest Arkansas the local column of my old Little Rock colleague Doug Thompson (an earnest journalist, sardonic in conversation) wrote glibly and at times carelessly of Wehco Media purchasing from Community Publishers the assets of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Body, Home, Street"","block_context":{"text":"Body, Home, Street","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/body-home-street\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1115,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2009\/04\/newspaper-stat-nsnc-stet\/","url_meta":{"origin":3903,"position":1},"title":"Newspaper Stat, NSNC Stet","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"April 18, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"There's been e-talk among the membership about renaming the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. I was for it, liked some of the proposals, but now I'm agin it. It's not that I'm sore that my suggestion, International House of Toast (nod to Bob and Ray) was ignored. We would be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2165,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2010\/08\/newspaper-paper-or-plastic\/","url_meta":{"origin":3903,"position":2},"title":"Newspaper, Paper or Plastic","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"August 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"My first \"President's Column\" for columnists.com. Thank you for electing me president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Didn\u2019t you hear? I have not published a running column since Sept. 16, 2001. Instead I\u2019ve written at www.benpollock.com\/brick for nearly seven years. After the first year, the water warms up.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1794,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2010\/02\/columnist-sympathizer\/","url_meta":{"origin":3903,"position":3},"title":"Columnist Sympathizer","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"February 18, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"A nice thing just happened. On Jan. 31, I was elected vice president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. I've been a card-carrying columnist since 1991, joining during the run of my column Mirthology, in the old Arkansas Democrat. The post is interim, to cover after a resignation, until\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Card-Carrying Columnist Card","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/NSNC_card-300x180.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":300,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/03\/newspaper-redcoats\/","url_meta":{"origin":3903,"position":4},"title":"Newspaper Redcoats","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"March 15, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"OKLAHOMA CITY -- The Will Rogers Writers' Workshop began with an evening reception Thursday, March 15, 2007, at the Gaylord headquarters, aka Oklahoma Publishing Co., aka The Oklahoman newspaper. The firm is far bigger than that, reminiscent of Donrey Media but older and broader, with TV stations besides newspapers of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "\"Never met a blog I didn't like\""","block_context":{"text":"\"Never met a blog I didn't like\"","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/nsnc\/oklahoma-city-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":314,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/05\/get-what-you-dont-pay-for\/","url_meta":{"origin":3903,"position":5},"title":"Get What You Don’t Pay For","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"May 13, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2007 Ben S. Pollock Last Monday, the 7th, newspaper publisher Walter E. Hussman, Jr. had an op-ed piece published in The Wall Street Journal. The essay already had been distributed to employees. The Journal apparently cut his first graf, a soft intro. It read fine this way. As usual\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3903"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3917,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3903\/revisions\/3917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}