END OF AN ERA

I'm having flashbacks of my parents sitting quietly in their living room easy chairs, each absorbed in their preferred sections of our hometown newspaper, The Beacon.  It served our small city of 60,000+ as well as the surrounding more rural areas of the county.  So many conversations with family and friends started with, "I saw it in the Beacon...", "The Beacon says...", "It will be in the Beacon..."  Our daily newspaper was a lifeline to our community, our nation, and the world (along with the Huntley/Brinkley Nightly News.)   When my mom died in 2008, I sent an obituary to be published in The Beacon for any who might be still in the area and would remember her living there for all but the last 10 years of her life when she moved here, near me.

When I grew up and lived in a Chicago suburb I took the "el" into the city daily to work. It seemed everyone had their Chicago Sun Times or Chicago Tribune broadsheets folded to a manageable size, like some sort of urban commuter origami, to read while seated on cracked pleather bench seats or standing swaying in time with the clickity-clack of the train on the tracks.  Often they would leave the paper behind and I felt lucky to score a slightly used copy, not having any money for my own subscription.

Living on a barrier island near Charleston SC we read the Post and Courier, delivered every morning to our palm-tree lined driveway.  We mostly checked the tide tables and restaurant reviews, but the paper also gave us insight into this strange and new place we'd committed two years of our lives to inhabiting.  

One of the very first things we did when we moved to our current city in the Pacific Northwest was to subscribe to the Daily Herald.  For 40+ years we've had home delivery -- at first it was in the traditional manner of a boy on a bike tossing the paper in the vicinity of our driveway after school.  Then it switched to being a morning paper, so adults drove multiple paper routes to string together a job that provided some income, delivering the paper in the wee dark hours so it was at our home well before 6:00 a.m.  

The Herald, when we moved here, was owned by the Washington Post and was considered one of the finest smaller city newspapers, with multiple sections, experienced and respected publishers and editors, a stable of fine and talented reporters, photographers, and columnists.  It was printed at the Herald offices and presses just blocks from our home.  We relied on the Herald for everything local and it was a great resource for national and world news too.  Editorially it leaned slightly left, so we liked that as well.  (Not all did -- there was always a lively exchange of opinion in the Letters to the Editor.)

But now....I'm in mourning this morning.  There will be no Herald delivered to my front steps.

It's no secret that newspapers, large and small, are struggling to stay afloat and in fact are shutting down with startling regularity as online resources for news and opinion are the preferred medium for consumers and advertisers alike.  Our Herald was sold a number of years ago and its content has shrunk precipitously, often to a thin one-section of news I've already heard about from online sources like Facebook and Twitter.  The huge Herald office was abandoned then sold, the printing press they use is now one they share with other papers, located 60 miles away. The offices are now in a shared building (the old GTE telephone building, another relic of by-gone days).  

The newspaper often is delivered late now; press problems and inclement weather create delays;  newspaper carriers are hard to retain.  I should not have been surprised when I got word this week that home delivery would cease.  But I was.  Shocked.  Anyone subscribing to the paper edition would begin to get theirs from the post office, with their mail, starting January 1.  (Side note: even our mail lately has not been delivered daily if they are short-staffed on mail carriers.)

I noticed the Herald more and more often encouraging readers to use the digital edition of the newspaper, even offering online tutorials on how to do that.  I've been tempted to go digital for a couple of years, but our newspaper carrier has been "our guy" for several years.  He lives 40 miles north and I have to think this job is one he needs, to be willing to get up in the middle of the night to deliver newspapers.  He's at my house between 4-5:00 (I see the headlights if I'm awake).  I kept home delivery, and hoped others would too, so he'd have his job.  Now I feel a bit like I was refusing to buy a refrigerator to keep the iceman employed.

When he told us about the cessation of home delivery, I decided I'd quit the paper edition.  I made the call yesterday.  They told me that today I'd have no paper on my front steps.  It's just that simple.  That abrupt. 

It will take some getting used to.  My first thought this morning was to go out the front door, down our long flight of stairs to the driveway, and grab the paper.  We once had a Golden Retriever who we trained to do that job for us.  When he died it took me weeks to get used to the void of that morning routine.  Now I will have to let go of my own newspaper retrieval habit.

Instead I poured a cup of coffee, opened my computer, and clicked on the digital Herald.  It's not the same.  And I'm sad.

At least, that's the view from here...©