Newspaper Nostalgia

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The Sunday New York Times was not a ride and toss delivery route when I was a kid.  My dad drove me around in our station wagon and I got out at each house and carried the paper up each walkway, opened each screen door and carefully nestled the paper against each front door as I quietly closed the screen. The transition to adult paper deliverers aside, a child’s paper route is left to nostalgia as we pull out our iPads to read the morning news.

My husband is reading the New York Times.  I don’t hear the crinkle of paper as he flips the page though—he has been reading the Times on his iPad for over a year now.  It’s like having a newspaper press next to our bed without all of the cacophony of machinery. And we get the late, late edition—the ones only New Yorkers used to be able to get by stepping out in the cool night air and walking around the corner to their newsstand.

When I read a story on the iPad the headline stays consistent from the start to the end of the article—no need to flip to an interior page and hunt for the altered headline the editor deemed necessary to create.  Color photos are far more numerous than in the print edition and unless the printed paper has come direct from Hogwarts, it doesn’t have any of the videos I find in my iPad version.  I have never wanted to post a comment on an article, but having the opportunity is cool. 

Yet I miss using the well-taught lessons on how to properly share a newspaper that I learned at a very young age from my dad.  We had a pecking order on who could read which section when. My dad got first choice of sections, mom second, older siblings next and eventually the comics in our local paper worked their way into my hands. Equally importantly, I learned how to refold my section and place it neatly upon the pile of sections from the Sunday paper stacked by my dad’s living room chair.

I miss the heft of the Sunday New York Times and the nesting of its sections.  I miss watching my dad flip through each paper to ensure all sections were present. I wonder what new newspaper etiquette will be passed on to the next generation as they read the morning news on lazy Sunday mornings.