Extra! Extra!

That title is a term that has just about left our everyday world.  What it referred to was a newspaper printing an extra edition because something major had happened. I just wrote the word newspaper,  another term that is disappearing from our lives. I miss newspapers. Sure, they still exist, but in much shorter form. Yes, you can read a newspaper online, but…..really? No. Not the same.

I grew up in a newspaper reading family. My dad, especially, loved reading the Morning Call every morning over coffee.  We even, for a while, also subscribed to the Evening Chronicle, the Morning Call’s evening edition. Yes, Allentown, for a long time, had two newspapers a day! I read recently that the Morning Call presses have stopped and the paper is now printed somewhere in New Jersey.  Sad. Bigly sad.

The Sunday paper was an especially big deal. My dad had a particular order in which he read the Sunday paper. He always ended with the funnies and the Parade Magazine.  When I still got the paper, I read it the same way. Traditions die hard.

I continued the newspaper reading tradition as long as I could. There came a point, maybe in the early ’90s, where they did away with newspaper boys and girls who delivered in their neighborhoods. They instead went to motor routes and inconsistent deliveries. Eventually, tired of reading the Morning Call at night instead of the morning, I gave up.

I just cannot get into reading the paper on-line. Maybe it’s because I am 66. Maybe it’s because I like the smell of a real newspaper and the feel of ink on my hands. Maybe it’s just that it seems so impersonal.  I do, most Sundays, buy a copy of the New York Times. Now that is a newspaper! I can literally spend an entire afternoon reading it.

Before ending this post about newspapers, here is a shout out to The Slatington News. It was my hometown paper growing up and it was printed once a week. There was very little news (not a lot of news in Slatington!), but it was the best way to know what the school cafeteria was serving next week and the starting times for church services.

There are still local newspapers, who print mostly feature stories, that are published weekly. My daughter, Emma, is going to be writing for one of them, the Parkland Gazette.

For those of you who still read a real newspaper, I salute you!