The Morning Paper

I am about to embark on new and uncharted territories. I have been getting some sort of morning paper almost my entire adult life. It has been such a part of my morning routine that I'm not certain how I will deal with this but the simple fact is in about a week I am terminating my morning paper delivery. I can't speak for other parts of the country but our paper has slowly declined in content, substance and value. They have had layoffs due to the economic slump which may be a contributing factor but also the surge in Internet use is making the paper old news and increasingly irrelevant.

What will I miss about the paper? Mostly the routine as I am definitely an individual that takes comfort in a set routine. Should one little thing disrupt my routine my day can quickly become unhinged. It is both a blessing and a curse at the same time. I wish I could be more flexible in that regard. I will miss Pickles. I know, I can still get Pickles online but it's that sense of excitement about just how funny it will be and how much it will mirror my own life. (It's often almost unsettling how close he and I are) I will miss listening to my wife sigh as she reads various stories that give rise to the notion that common sense is slowly being sucked out of every area of our society. I will miss the sports section that I peruse every morning and other than checking out where my Yankees are and what the Canes are doing, I'm not sure why. I will miss hearing how my friend Ed is doing taking the commercial real estate world by storm as every week he seems to be featured some way or another! I will miss an occasional flash of literary brilliance although the occasions seem to have been directly affected by the layoffs that have taken place. Mostly I'll miss the routine.

I think that the degradation of print media has been taking place almost in direct correlation to the rise of the Internet. In one way, the newspaper has always almost been a symbol of forward thinking and community awareness and although these things can be drawn from the electronic media it just doesn't seem the same to me. Then again, I still think cell phones are the scourge of the Earth so I have a ways to go in acceptance of new technologies.

So there you have it. I am getting ready to sail into uncharted territories. I am shedding the increasingly antiquated habit of reading my morning paper. I guess I will have a few extra minutes to do something else now. I better think of something that will fall exactly into that time slot as to not disrupt my routine. That would be a true tragedy.