The News

 

  In 2010 I read a prediction that said within ten years there would no longer be newsstands in airports. This seemed hard to believe. Whenever I got off a plane I'd see lots of abandoned newspapers in the seats of people who had gotten off ahead of me. I wrote that prediction in the back of my diary and kept track of it. People who make predictions do so to look intelligent and they count on other people forgetting what they said when the prediction doesn't come to be. 

  The first iPhone came out in 2007. Five years later even I had one. When I checked the airport in 2020 there were still newsstands but it was harder to find a newspaper for sale and there were no longer newspapers left behind in the airplane seats. When I checked a newsstand last fall (2023), there were no newspapers for sale. There were lots of magazines and books for sale as well as pop, candy, and water. It's a mystery why anyone would buy water when there's a water fountain twenty feet away.

  My first job was in the newspaper industry- in logistics. I had a paper route at age twelve and have been employed ever since. The paper I delivered was The Boston Globe and it was an important part of my life growing up.  I learned to read for pleasure with the funnies. Later, in the sports pages, I learned of the epic struggle between the Red Sox and the Yankees. And in the rest of the paper I saw how rivalries in sports were the rule of the world. I was especially intrigued by a feature called "Editorial Points," a collection of clever epigrams on the news of the day. Who writes these things? I wondered. These "points" are the father of my Sunday Squibs.

  My real father was a pilot on the Boston Harbor fireboat and he often took pictures of ships in the harbor just because he loved boats. One day he read in the paper that one of the ships he had photographed had been shipwrecked. My father gathered us boys up and we drove to The Globe's headquarters to see if they could use his photo. It was a Sunday morning and we were sent to the editor's desk in the quiet newsroom. The editor thanked my father but said the story was now cold. The editor turned to me and asked if I was interested in the news business. I was about to say I loved reading the Globe and that I was already an employee of his fine paper. And who writes those editorial points? But just then the editor's phone rang and he waved us goodbye as he answered it. My big chance was missed. 

  Old people still read newspapers. I used to buy the Sunday Minneapolis Tribune out of sentiment. I did enjoy seeing the stories spread out before me just as I like to check my paper atlas to make sure the GPS is not leading me the long way around as it sometimes does. But during Covid, there was no one to bring the Sunday paper to Roseau.

  You can still find print newspapers in big cities. But down in the subway everyone's on their phone. They might be reading investigative reporting, but probably not. The head of The NY Times said they will continue to print a physical paper for the foreseeable future, but he says at some point everything will migrate to the internet.

  The demand for paper for newspapers has dropped by eighty percent in the last twenty years. That's not saving any trees though. The slack has been taken up by packaging for online shopping. 

UCLA 1969 - The Birth of the Internet. "Push that button and there will be unforeseen consequences."