Another Plea for Sundays

Granted this is long winded and occasionally pretentious, but darn it, I'd like my full measure of Perspective back along with the Books section of the local paper. Without further ado, a letter to the editor:

Dear Messrs. Greenberg and Kane:

It is wholly a pleasure to engage plastic Chiclets to charge phosphors and diodes in response to the recent decisions of the legacy media enterprise known as the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Today’s Perspectives section carrying an obituary to the printed word that was performed either with tremendous irony and just a soupcon of insider’s joke to provoke responses similar to my own, or the complete and total lack of full awareness of the precipice really is systemic of newspapermen.

If I may engage in a moment’s self-promotion – as no self-respecting net media type would not plug their own blog – in my response last month on-line to the downsizing decisions of the ADG by dropping Books and Travel, I noted that it seemed like self-mutilation. Those of us still buying the print edition, are we the best demographic for Style? Gee, if we like our trees dropped on our doorstep, chances are we’d like to read about bound editions of them, AND read the opinions of others about them.

Can I find book reviews elsewhere? Absolutely. But I have become accustomed to the opinion of those I know, and put value in the Brand – there, I spoke the buzzword de jour – that is the motley crew of my local newspaper. In homage to Mr. Greenburg, I seek the Southern opinion on Books, not one that was made in New York City.

Instead, we get more encouragement to go on-line. For those of us in the Great Northwest, a scold that you savages out in the distant hinterlands should log on to continue imbibing in the delivered wisdom of those located in the Central like Philip Martin. Speaking of Mr. Martin’s essay, as he joins the chorus to wring hands and peel bells for the passing of his medium, could we not recognize a truer loss? The departure of the statewide community the statewide newspaper brings.

More and more, the paper becomes an index, and a dated one at that, for what we might find on those pesky internets.

The paperless office we were promised along with The Automobile of Tomorrow has not come to pass. Nor will it. As long as man has committed written language to surface, the quest has not been for the slickest browser, it has been for the cheapest fixed medium. Until the day when Our Scientists can bring us The Newspaper of The Future, some organically grown flexible LCD that can also double as a wrapping for our leftover Soylent proteins, the consumption of paper will continue to increase.

Note to the Greens: Within every home, attached to almost every desk, there is a small cut-sheet printing press. While it lacks the romantic charm and distinct odors of spinning rolls of the printing plant, it fuels our insatiable need for pulp. Quite fiction to think by eliminating a printed edition we save our environment. Have you checked out the amount of heavy metals contained within a single computer, the carcinogenic components of toner and ink cartridges?
But I digress from the central thesis, and do so at my own cause’s risk. After all, I have long ago exceeded the magical 140 characters that all net worthy know is the limit of both our expression and attention span.

Let me restate in the haiku-like form of the Tweet: This isn’t fighting the future; Raising hand to note, can’t force the future; adapt to our needs, give us right info on right platform.

If we believe the RIAA, digital formats were the end of music. Before that, if we believed the Motion Picture Association of America, the video recorder was the end of entertainment. Today, Cassandra speaks through the Legacy Media; those internets are the end of days.

By the way, as sure as the Paperless Office was going to save the forests, even though we are hip deep in the Worst Economy in Recent Memory, sales of CDs and DVDs, both music and moving picture, are up last quarter. How can that be? Because the internet is the most recent incarnation of the most effective advertising medium known to man. The future isn’t in Free Content. Regrettably, it is a proven business : any good dealer will let you have the first taste for free.

The Sunday newspaper is about convenience, just as books are about convenience. Edward Tufte is right – there are some things that work best in print, but you have to be imaginative enough to escape Flatland and give us the content we seek in the medium we want. Stock prices and sports scores are dated, the weather map and forecast is useless when frozen in print.
A sense of salon, that true Value Added content that can only come from experienced writers and editorialists – this is what we seek. And when what we want has migrated on-line, the Sunday paper ceases to fulfill its utility. So I salute you in your march to the edge by reducing the portions of the newspaper of most interest to those who still sit on the porch (and, to be frank and forthcoming, other places) on a Sunday morning to read.

We can’t pass our Kindle back and forth in the coffee shop. We don’t gather ‘round the flat screen. People still trade newspaper sections back and forth on a casual weekend. Reading is an individual art form, and if you haven’t noticed, reading is going up. How can that be as this slack-jawed, finger-twitching wireless X-Box controller generation knows only how to engage either in Mortal Kombat or NCAA 2009 Dynasty Mode? Generation Twitter texts, not talks.

Mourn the passing of the personal letter at your own peril. Before the rise of the E-Mail Leviathan, just how many of those personal letters did you really write? Today, how many more notes to friends and colleagues to you write because it’s easier to sit down at the keyboard, compose and transmit?

Having far exceeding the 700-word limit – wait, let me guess, it can go on-line where word-count is infinite – let me close with the admonition that we, the Loyal Reader, aren’t deserting the newspaper for the browser. Far more often it is the quintessential definition of that old Whittaker Chambers saw as the print edition becomes that curiosity shop unvisited by the public thanks to the decisions of the owner. We want to drop in and visit, particularly on the weekends, but increasingly there is nothing we want to see.

Good night, and good luck.

OK -- I did warn you it was long.