Articles

Don't Stop the Presses
If you've abandoned the daily newspaper in favor of the Internet, you're missing out on one of life's perennial pleasures
By: Scott S. Greenberger
Article appeared in the October 2007 edition of GQ

I grew up in Washington, D.C., in the 1980s, when the Redskins were kicking ass and I had to race my two brothers downstairs in the mornings to grab the Washington Post sports section. When I won, I taunted them by dribbling soggy Cheerios on the pages and reading aloud the best passages about Theismann, Riggins, and Monk. My own kids aren't likely to have the same experience: By the time they're old enough to read the newspaper, having a printed paper dropped on the doorstep may be as archaic as home delivery of milk (or the notion of the Redskins as a Super Bowl contender).

That newspaper circulation is plummeting as subscribers defect to the Internet comes as no surprise. The paper that comes every morning is yeterday's news for anyone who's on a computer during the day or has headlines and box scores beamed to his BlackBerry–that is, for just about everybody.

When GQ launched in 1957, there were 130 million fewer Americans but 300 additional daily newspapers. Nearly every major U.S. city had more than one paper, and New York City had seven. As recently as 1983, the year the Redskins won their first Super Bowl, 66 percent of adults read the newspaper during the week. By 2006, the percentage had dropped to about 50 percent. The best newspapers will find a foothold in the digital world. But the printed version of the paper is probably doomed. In a sign of things to come, this July The New York Times shrank by an inch and a half in width to save money.

But one of the great things about flipping through the pages of the traditional paper is finding the odd article you weren't looking for and becoming engrossed in a topic you didn't think mattered to you. Just when you thought you didn't care about what Pope Benedict condemned this week...

Then there are the physical advantages of a printed newspaper. I'm not just talking about its utility as an improvised umbrella or something you whack your dog with. It's depressing to think that future generations of men won't know the joy of discovering the sports section left behind in a bathroom stall. And good luck burying your head in that computer printout when your wife or girlfriend is letting you have it for those dishes you didn't do.

For many, it's hard to imagine Sundays without a two-hour stint on the couch, surrounded by the detritus of the impossibly fat Sunday New York Times. My father, who wrote for The Wall Street Journal for nearly three decades, says that his love affair with the newspaper began when he was a young Coast Guard recruit. Every Sunday during basic training, he'd buy the Times in the mess hall and sneak off to a grassy spot in a far corner of the base to avoid being tapped to clean the latrines. There's something to be said for rituals, and no good rituals involve staring at a twelve-inch screen. Enjoy this one while you can.

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