End Of An Era
Before I get too melodramatic, let me just say that I have been a newspaper reader since childhood. That may mean I read the comics, and then added the sports section to the read and then added the rest of the paper as my understanding of words progressed. But the "morning paper" was an important and as close to a constant as I care to think in my development. My mother, an early riser, would have the whole paper read, articles to share marked for note or clipping, as well as breakfast and school lunches made for the chilluns by the time we arrived at the breakfast table. I even subscribed to the Washington Post for a year when I was down in the Old North State for the collegiate experience.
Needless to say, it has been easily a decade and a half since I last regularly read the Washington Post due to its fierce leftist stance, regardless of facts or its allegation to be an "independent newspaper." I've read the Washington Times. And, generally, been happy with it. It's certainly more honest than the Post. But the Times has suffered of late. Scroll through ex-Timesman Stacy MacCain's blog (The Other McCain in my blogroll) to read the story. The Times is going to shed anything but its "core" so there'll be no more crossword puzzle and sudoku (actually already gone for a couple of weeks). Sue me but I enjoy those things as part of the whole newspaper read.
I'll still get the paper until my subscription runs out but I doubt I'll resubscribe.
This may give me one more hour a day but I will have lost something in that gain. It leaves me sad. I can hope that at some point a full-on newspaper will arise to compete with the Post but I think that the era of newsprint is essentially past us now. So here I go, posting this lament on the internet which is the very instrumentality that has eaten the lunch of the medium whose decline saddens me. O tempora, O mores! Sic transit gloria mundi.
On the other hand, jumping off at Glenn Reynolds's InstaPundit is a very good way to get a whole lot of the news of the day before the paper can deliver it and there are news aggregators like Drudge so I won't be without news. I just won't have it in the form to which I've grown accustomed.