A feast for all the senses, in a sense electronic media Sometimes we shiver as we hold closed our bathroom and Then we settle back into bed with our super-sized mug We usually start with the front page, just to make sure Perhaps we are representative of the last generation In the interest of full disclosure, we once One of our jobs, along with fetching, retrieving, delivering We were told speed was of the essence, supposedly so Inevitably, we got clocked by the cops. The Dowbrigade What can we say? The smell of fresh newsprint still Any kind of a life crisis – medical, emotional, financial or existential – imbues one with a renewed appreciation of life’s simple pleasures. Like the morning newspaper. It may be sacrilegious for a "new media" guy to say, but there … Continue reading ![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/dailbull.jpg\")
Any kind of a life crisis – medical, emotional, financial
\n or <\/em>existential – imbues one with a renewed appreciation of life’s
\n simple pleasures. Like the morning newspaper. It may be sacrilegious
\n for a "new media" guy to say, but there is no electronic pleasure comparable
\n to crawling out of bed in a dim dewy dawn light, stumbling bleary-eyed
\n to the front door, and finding there, waiting every single morning, the
\n feast for the senses that is the Our Daily Paper. Not our ONLY daily
\n paper, of course, but our first-borne.<\/p>\n
\n will never be. The sight of the rolled up compilation of the newsworthy
\n essence of the day, wrapped in one or more layers of translucent blue
\n protective plastic (depending on the weather), festooned with fonts,
\n figures, line drawings and full-color photos from front to back, oozing
\n with information, advertising, and multiple nuggets of knowledge, humor
\n and occasional wisdom is what convinces us we’ve survived to see another
\n day.. We drink in the
\n smell of fresh newsprint, mere hours from the house-sized
\n monster presses, and the biodegradable vegetable dye ink. We luxurate
\n in the tactile feel of those 80 or 100 pages, foldable, clipable, wrapable,
\n portable
\n material,
\n which in addition to being readable can be wrapped around boxes, fish
\n or kitty boxes, used to cushion china, clean glass, house train pets,
\n protect things from paint, construct poppers and airplanes and paper
\n trees and paper mache, create confetti, and start a fire. Try doing
\n any of those things with your flat-screen monitor.<\/p>\n
\n glance immediately at the mini-weather report at the top of page one
\n to figure out what we should wear.<\/p>\n
\n of "Flor de Manabi" Ecuadorian coffee (with chemicals) and
\n the magic hour before we go to work, when we can muse and ruminate, laugh
\n and cry, be amused and amazed and indignant, make connections, jot down
\n ideas, mentally compose blog postings, root for and rue our sports surrogates,
\n and note which stories to keep an eye on as the day develops.<\/p>\n
\n the world hasn’t ended, or radically changed, since we went to bed.
\n We know this is ridiculous, because the paper in our hands came off
\n the presses at about the same time we were watching the 11:00 news before
\n falling asleep, but it is reassuring somehow, anyway. Then Sports,
\n International,
\n Local, Business and Arts. We finish with the crossword puzzle, often
\n over lunch.<\/p>\n
\n of news addicts with this ingrained predilection for a paper paper, and
\n by the time our grandkids are serious readers paper newspapers will take
\n their place alongside telegrams and afternoon editions in the museum
\n of antiquated media.<\/p>\n
\n worked for a paper paper. The 17-year-old Dowbrigade was a copy boy on
\n the Democrat
\n and Chronicle<\/a>, flagship rag of the Gannett empire long before
\n USA Today sullied Newspaper Row from coast to coast. <\/p>\n
\n and writing the pity six-word-maximum description of the weather that
\n appears with the temp and precip forecasts at the top of page one, was
\n to drive a couple of the first papers off of the presses (at around 6:30
\n pm) out to Paul Miller and. Al Neuharth, the head honchos of the organization,
\n who lived in ritizy suburbs about 37 and-a-half miles due south on a
\n series of connected interstates and local roads. <\/p>\n
\n the top dogs could do a final, personal edit and deliver the classics
\n "Stop the presses!" and "Replate!" telephonically. We don’t know if that
\n ever happened, but we do know that if we kept the petal to the metal
\n in the police stock Olds 88 that they assigned us for the drive we could
\n make it, downtown parking lot to suburban driveway, in 30 minutes.<\/p>\n
\n had long hair and an attitude in those days (imagine that!); it was a
\n miracle we didn’t get stopped more often. We were going 22 miles over
\n the speed limit, which was 65 in those days. In an important lesson in
\n civics and government’s relations with the press, the paper had the ticket
\n fixed.<\/p>\n
\n gets us high.\n <\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"