GOODBYE, MY LOVE, GOODBYE
A Widow Bit – Feb. 20, 2011
By Mary Koch

            I slowly put the phone back in its cradle, feeling as if I were walking away from my lover’s deathbed with the patient still breathing. The caller had been “Cody” from the Seattle Times, announcing I was to receive a free, three-month subscription.

            “Why?” I asked after a dumfounded pause.

            “We’re trying to increase circulation in the, uh, Omak area.” He at least pronounced the name correctly, though it’s possible he’d never heard of this little town, 250 miles from Seattle. The state’s largest metropolitan daily newspaper, the lone survivor in what was once a lively, competitive newspaper city, is that desperate. They’re flinging their papers across the countryside.

            Many years ago, when I was an editor for the Associated Press, I’d applied for a job at the Times. It wouldn’t have been a promotion, more a lateral move into a building across the street and a job with less responsibility and stress. The Times hired a fellow AP staffer instead. Within months she complained that she was bored and had made the wrong career move.

            AP was never boring, but at the end of the day you had nothing to show for your efforts. Your stories went out by teletype – later by computer – over phone lines, to be published in newspapers far away or read over the airwaves, disappearing into the ether. I longed for a freshly printed newspaper that was at least temporary witness to my work.

            Newsprint is addictive. No event in my journalism career was ever as exciting as the opportunity to simply stand in the pressroom, a humble witness to the magical craft of printing. Pressmen, swaggering with confidence, thread giant rolls of newsprint onto enormous web presses – double or triple the size of locomotives. Bells clang as the machinery slowly begins to roll, more bells during the stop-and-go process while adjustments are made, registrations fine-tuned. Then with a roar, they’re off, louder and faster than the Indy 500, and you want to weep as your days and weeks of work are spit out, trimmed and folded in mere minutes.

            The irony was not lost on me as I said to Cody from the Times, “I’ll pass.” Accepting the offer would only increase my recycling chores, and there’s no need. I find more news on my computer than I’ll ever have time to read. Thus I reluctantly participate in the end of an era.

            About 20 years ago, my husband and I attended a newspaper publishers’ conference during which a “futurist” predicted that by the year 2010, newspapers would be “dinosaurs.” The audience gasped in disbelief. Of course we will always need the services that newspapers provide. But revolutions once fueled by pamphlets and papers are now sparked by Facebook and Twitter.

            Newspapers are not yet as extinct as dinosaurs, but many dailies are gone or on life support. I’m cheered that my favorite genre – community weeklies – remains in satisfactory condition, but my own romance with newsprint is pretty much over.

            Ah, love. So fickle.