Will your grandkids ever get their hands dirty from a freshly printed newspaper?
June 15, 2015
Are you old enough to remember the heyday of newspapers. Trucks would deliver bundles of papers to your neighborhood where they would be picked up by "newsboys" who could either be boys or girls.
They would be delivered house to house in the neighborhood sometime in the afternoon. And most moms would remind dads to not let the newsprint get on anything where the ink would wear off. For the sports-minded kid who wanted to check box scores from baseball games, the paper would be the go-to place. That meant dirty hands.
Now newspapers are going away. As they move closer and closer to extinction, I wonder if my three grandchildren will ever hold a newspaper in their hands.
It wasn't that long ago that newspapers were the eyes and ears for everyday citizens who wanted information about everything from the local city council to Little League teams. This is in addition to wire news about national and international happenings.
One of the real rushes when I worked for the Chicago Tribune was when a bundle of newspapers would be delivered to the newsroom. It was a buzz to get a fresh newspaper that came off the press a few minutes before.
When I went to the MSU School of Journalism, the old building it was housed in had a newspaper reading room with papers from throughout the country. I could spend half a day going papers from big and small cities.
That time is gone. It has been replaced by the web where news reporting has a faint resemblance to what is has been historically.
I can't wait to take them through the Newseum in Washington, D.C. where they can get a close-up look at newspapers and journalism when it was a lifeline to our way of life.