Newspaper Dinosaur

I fell in love with newspapers growing up in Winston-Salem, N.C., which was the big city to my cousins from Weldon, but not to me.  We had a morning and an evening paper back then and I remember sitting on the front porch waiting for the kid down the street and his brother to ride by and deliver it so I could read it back to front, starting with Dear Abby.  Until my mom came to snatch it away from meso she could peruse the grocery ads.  (Seven kids, so she was always checking grocery ads.)   

 The Winston-Salem Journal won a Pulitzer back then, for coverage of the riots after Martin Luther King was assassinated.  I remember how they published a picture of the Pulitzer medal on the top right of the front page for years afterwards.  Winston-Salem was in the BigTime then. 

To me, newspapers were a world of knowledge and glamour and even though there were many detours along the way, it eventually seemed natural for me to go into the newspapering business. 

Flash forward to now, in Los Angeles, circa 2007.  I hardly ever read the actual newspaper that arrives on my doorstep every morning.  I read it on the Internet.  I feel guilty about recycling a paper that’s never even opened — An Inconvenient Truth and all — but I can’t bring myself to cancel my subscription, even though everyone else is.  (In my little courtyard of townhouses, only two of us subscribe to the Times.)   Cancelling would be like turning my back on someone so dear to my life.  Besides, the Times is practically giving away subscriptions now.  Mine was something like $35 for a whole year. 

I guess I figure that the dinosaur will die soon enough without any assistance from me.