Stop the presses!
No, really. Can you please stop them?
One part of me will always root for the newspaper industry since I spent eight of the best collective years of my life and maybe a grand total of about one lousy year in an ink-stained haze. It’s a most thrilling lifestyle.
There’s something really special about working in a newsroom. At one time it was a smoke filled-den where editors puffed away, using tuna cans stripped of their labels as ashtrays. Those poor, poor editors couldn’t pony up for some carnival glass variety that said something cheesy like, “Virginia is for Lovers.” Nope. Not them. They were way too tough. Some wore suits. Some whispered into their phones all day like they were gathering evidence for a coup later that day. They just didn’t want other reporters to know what they were doing, or they were talking to their girlfriends. What did I know? I started on the obit desk.
The newsroom was a colorful place where people from all walks of life would come to tell their stories. Some of the stories sounded true. Others just sounded downright impossible. But, all were taken with some degree of seriousness, in case they were true.
My favorite moments in the newsroom would come when some reporter would reveal he/she had a “hot tip.” Predictably, some wise guy on the other side of the room would intone, “Oh. I knew that three weeks ago!” Really? And you kept it to yourself? Dunce.
Anyway, I know newspapers are in the struggle of their life right now. The production costs are high. They are labor intensive. Getting the product from the press to the people is a logistical nightmare. And, of course, you can never get everything in there that you want each day. In fact, newspapers are sometimes dated by the time their tossed in the bushes near your doorstep.
So, when I see some of the stories in the newspaper these days, I sigh. Especially when they are national news stories.
Here’s one that recently frosted my buttons. It was placed on the business page of the local paper that gave me pause. The headline was “Do-It-yourself a growing idea” and it appears to be part of a series called “The New Frugality.”
There are two photos in the story. One features a woman bravely cleaning her own sink. The other features a man with the courage to mow his own lawn.
It seems that ordinary people are realizing something Grandma probably spent years discovering: We may have to be responsible for our own chores as adults. And, there may be a place called a kitchen where the new frugality may be explored with a device called a stove. People are waking up to the realization that all food doesn’t come in a portion-segmented Styrofoam container.
I know what you’re saying: Why me? What have I done to deserve this? Well, maybe some people did nothing. And that’s the problem. While we all scream about being in the throes of an economic calamity, we’ve probably forgotten about the way our daring ancestors acted when faced with a lack of available funding. Although someone else may suffer, people are discovering ironing is not as complicated as first thought. I remember how much my grandmother loved to iron. She even ironed socks. Now, normal, average people are discovering their roots all over again by checking out the “cotton” setting. It all comes so naturally!
There are some other things that are undergoing a moment of discovery, like the snow blower and paint brush. Who knew there’s nothing really magical about some of these things? It’s like discovering another person living within, one with a penchant for manual labor.
And so it goes. A newspaper tells you something you probably already know. No wonder why the industry is swimming in ink of the wrong color.
Rush Limbaugh
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