Newspaper *

This afternoon while writing about the atrophy of the newspaper market, I remembered helping a friend with his paper route for a few months back when we were both in junior high school. His name was Rodney Hammonds. His family had moved into the large two story house just east of the junk yard in Charlottesville. Rodney and I became fast friends when he intervened in a possible scuffle with a few older boys about some stupid thing I can’t even recall that was no doubt caused by a difference in opinion.

I helped Rodney on Sundays with the monstrous Sunday morning editions of the Indianapolis Star. We fashioned wagons to our bicycles to pick up the substantial delivery load. I imagined each family with their paper; chubby little children pouring over the color comics, mother’s looking through ads and clipping coupons, and father’s with pipe and slippers combing over all the important world news and flipping to the sports page to find out what great victory, or blunder had occurred.

Today I read that many papers barely have enough weight, or content, to make the toss all the way to porches and front doors across our bible belted America. It’s just not profitable to advertize in a rapidly decreasing market; and if a newspaper can’t make money, it can’t very well be expected to keep those presses running.

I wonder if one day I’ll be telling my grandchildren about the smell of fresh ink on newsprint paper, and trying to describe the snap, rumple, crimp, and crease of a morning paper with coffee???