Every day, the print media reports more dismal numbers - circulation falling, ad sales plunging, newspapers going partially or completely digital or shutting down. As I read this in the printed pages of the Wall Street Journal, I think gloomy thoughts about a paperless future.
How will I ever do without a print newspaper? I don't much enjoy reading news on my phone; scrolling endlessly with my thumb is a chore; the constantly moving page gives me a headache; and I find my memory of what I read is often evanescent. It is something I do only on the go, when I have forgotten to carry a book and have nothing else to do. In contrast, reading through print is relaxing - I can quickly move my eyes over type that stands still, and my ten minutes at the breakfast table with a cup of tea and a newspaper are the most prized me-time of the day.
I like the smell and the rustle of the sheets and the comfortable feeling of spreading them all over the dining table at breakfast. And most of all, I love the layout. How can one not love the comfortably static visual nature of a newspaper layout?
And how can one not love the sheer physicality of the print medium (before you ask, I love trees. I'm just not sure that the carbon footprint of a cell phone that's recharged n times a day is really less than that of a newspaper)? I love that I can pick up a pen and jot down a message or phone number on the margins of the newspaper. I love that they can be crumpled or sodden, or even tea-stained.
Screens are not only stressful
to the eyes, they are stressful to the mind as well... reading print
before bedtime relaxes the mind, whereas a light-emitting screen excites it. Screens, I believe, lead you to read more and more of what you always read. Paper lays it all out in front of you, drawing you perhaps to something you might have not sought out yourself. It somehow gives both an immediacy and a permanence to what you read on the pages. What I read online often has an evanescence, perhaps because the New York Times and the Huffington Post and Perez Hilton exist in a sort of an equal space which makes them all equally forgettable, somehow ... an endless labryinth of digital links unhealthily draining on time and energy.
A physical newspaper is curated. It is limited. In the gamut of words being thrown my way, I find this to be its most important feature.
