News with Coffee
This past weekend, my longtime daily ritual of the morning coffee and newspaper came to an end. The coffee part of it will endure, of course, but not the newspaper part. My subscription to the Democrat & Chronicle ended on Saturday, and resuming the subscription will cost triple the current rate.
The hike is almost certainly a reflection of the Gannet’s raging labor disputes and revenue losses. Whatever the reason, the writing has been on the wall for awhile. Last Saturday’s D & C will almost certainly be the final hard-copy newspaper ever delivered to my home — for the record, I drank Dean’s Beans Fine and Mellow coffee as I read it.
A way of life ended this past Saturday — the morning coffee and newspaper ritual.
Coffee and the newspaper made a good team for a century or so. It’s a classic diner image, somebody sipping the morning’s brew while browsing through the day’s news. This happened at the “third places” around town, in homes, and in offices everywhere. Hot coffee can’t be chugged, and so with proper pacing, a mug could last all the way through a good, thorough reading of the day’s key articles.
For families with multiple readers, the morning newspaper also provided lessons in sharing and cooperation — Dad got the business section first, Mom started with the front section, while Sis read the arts/entertainment section and others took sports, the funnies, fashion, local concert tours, but you get the point.
There’s obvious irony in a niche-subject blogger weeping over the demise of newsprint. Some of this is sentimentality from someone who really enjoyed reading the newspaper knowing that a way of life for at least four generations of family just ended. In time, I’ll probably get over the feeling that news isn’t news until the print edition is in hand. I’m far from a technophobe, and there are plenty of virtues to the online news medium — it’s greener, — more timely, and it potentially can blend the best of print and broadcast media.
But there are other reasons for my reluctance to morph from the morning-coffee-and-newspaper routine to the morning-coffee-and-laptop. I already spend many hours glued to my computer each day, and I’m not especially eager to spend yet more time staring at pixels on a screen. My klutziness makes this an unwelcome change, too. Spilling coffee on a newspaper was no big deal; spilling it on a laptop will be a fiasco.
Anthony Crilly is a freelance writer who lives in Rochester, NY. He is a newbie writer and current sales and consultant in the local industry. He currently writes for his blog tonemansblog trying to find a niche for this various type of blog.
Although Anthony no longer drinks coffee until 3 a.m. as he did in college, he starts each day with two giant servings of drip-pot coffee in his Buffalo Bills mug with the old-school logo.
