Auf Wiedersehen
Consider this column a paean to an antiquated technology, in the manner, say, of an ode to hand-churned butter. Hey, hand-churned butter had a lot going for it, and even today, some folks swear by it. That the stuff was superseded by an economically superior product can’t erase its charms.
The same holds for newspapers. Print’s ultimate demise is a fate foretold by as many indisputable line graphs as Al Gore wields to prove that Knut and his kin are in trouble. But before it disappears forever, let’s pause to remember what’s beautiful and useful about the newspaper — if mainly for the sake of posterity, also to point out what about it we should aim to replicate digitally.
The newspaper, first and chiefly, is easy to skim. Any single day’s news is a motley collection of barely related events, many of which even the most wild-eyed news junkie finds quite boring. The newspaper’s genius is putting them together in a way that highlights connections and implicit categories, and that shows off enough of each to quickly tell you what you need to know.
It’s like a shopping mall of news; you don’t have to enter every store to have any fun. Just peering in the windows — scanning the pictures and captions, passing over the headline and pull-quotes and the lead sentence, noting the story’s placement — can be worthwhile.
Para los nostálgicos amantes de la celulosa y el celuloide. Los primeros tienen este canto de despedida a la lectura del periódico en papel. Los segundos, este blog que recopila fotografías hechas analógicamente, con carrete de película: Smells Funny. La imagen que ven, no lo nieguen, encaja perfectamente, con una niña gótica ochentera sentada en una barbería “atemporal” y desierta…
