….feels like a paper; OMG it´s a newspaper! Its NYT….:
A regular Thursday morning (actually it´s not, since it´s Easter) finds me at the breakfast table with my view of the San Francisco Bay. It is a view that I will never quite get used to and also miss tremendously when we leave to go back to Norway. But something else is different this morning. I finally decided to go get the newspaper in the original format, the way a newspaper is supposed to be read — on paper. The New York Times. There´s nothing wrong with the iPad version or getting it on your laptop. I´ve had that for years, and I read it every day. But then again, there is something more right about the feel, the texture, and the mode of reading, on paper.
There´s a lot more space for words. That´s the first thing you´ll notice. Actually, my eyes have grown so accustomed to the larger lettering in the digital versions that it will take some getting used to. It may be my 55+ years, too. But I will get the hang of reading an actual newspaper eventually. There are hundreds of words. Oh, my! Is it possible? On a single page? And even more so, this is one of those newspapers that proudly defied all talk of going tabloid. Big sheets, every page — so there´s room, and lots of it. The New York Times still looms large, spreads out, fills a family dining room table easily, and has enough sections on a Sunday to be shared by an entire extended family. Time those sections with a few 100 words read pr person before swapping the travel section for the business section, and you have what might be called a r e a l newspaper.
Yes, for what is a newspaper besides a lot of words on a napkin sent in the mail, folded up?
What is a newspaper?
A newspaper is recognition. A daily or regular meeting point with a certain way of understanding the world, with the time to actually read and the time also to reflect. A newspaper is not a think to swipe through, literally — swiping your index finger (or whatever finger you sue for swiping) from left to right on a screen, going through hundreds of articles by the headline. A newspaper should not be swiped. It should be read. But it has to deserve its audience, you might argue. I wold agree with that. A newspaper is a message. The newspaper industry was born in the age of industrialism, and like trains they brought information from one place to another. But they did more. They proudly served a community, and people would wait for the incoming. Maybe newspapers still ought to be more like trains? And maybe we ought to value the trains we have left more, not just as museum artifacts but as actually intelligent and sustainable ways to travel? Not as fast as the plane. And there are places you cannot go on a train. But when you can, maybe you ought to defend both the train and the newspaper on paper, simply because it´s a better way to appreciate the nature outside?
I do that, too. I swipe. But I don´t mistake swiping an online magazine for reading. I read very differently, when my nose is inside a book. I have about a dozen magazines on Flipboard that I fill with interesting stuff, from the newspapers, in order for readers (too few of those) to find links and combinations not otherwise found. I can drop about 200 articles into those magazines in 30 minutes, and have a superficial understanding of what they are. Some of them I come back to, when I research an issue for instance for a scholarly paper. That is why I keep those magazines, and I thought I might as well share them with others who share the thematic interest. But they´re not newspapers.
On this particular day, I am looking at a front page in The Times article about changes going on in the Middle East. I know that before I am done with that article I will (a) actually have learned something, (b) gone on to another op-ed article on the theme and learnt some more, at least an argument, and (c) spent some time actually thinking. You see, that is what a good newspaper does: It makes you think. That is why the Norwegian ones are hardly worth their name, because they do not have that ambition anymore. They used to. Now, they´re run by cop-outs, honestly. Good people I am sure. But not the kind that would die for a good opinion. Nor would they hire someone who could actually write — they´d have to give that someone space to actually write. And tabloid size does not allow for it, when on top of the limited space most editor also insist on big photos. Newspaper real estate is a contested commodity now that everyone is going from tabloid down to iPhone size, also in terms of their vision of what news is. The Norwegians are proud to say they´re leading the pack. And in fact they´re quite the innovators — but not of journalism, mostly of payment solutions. What you´re paying for is an entirely different issue. Or so it seems.
I move on to a travel article, and it actually takes me dreaming away, to some train I am reading about criss-crossing the interior of Sri Lanka. It´s a place I have never been, but the article takes me a bit closer. And it is not written to attract advertising by vendors of sun screen products, or airline tickets. There´s nothing – so I feel taken care of, in some strange way. I am a reader og a travel story, and not consumer of product. Thank you.
Now I have to go to work, and here´s the other part: The paper will keep. I know I will be sitting down with it this evening –especially because we don´t own a TV set. I have not watched a single TV program since July, and it is now April the year after. I have not missed it. I have not read a single newspaper from home either – not even a single article. I have no clue as to what they are writing about. And I´ve not missed that part either. Nor do I think I´m a dumber person for it. Probably the opposite. I have a lot of leeway to go on.
So, my iPhone can be used for other things than reading the news — the world of new media is complex and less black and white than I made it sound above: I can use it to upload a newspaper photo, or actually a photo of a new paper. I put it up on top of this article.
The article took me 10 minutes to write. Meanwhile, I was leafing through the paper, just enjoying the sound.
Yes, newspapers on paper have sound. That is part of the distinction. The sound of paper.
A distraction
Of course, not any newspaper fits that description. In my native country we hardly have newspapers, for instance. To my knowledge we have three. There may be some others, but not consequential ones, and all in tabloid-dreary “let me die in peace” formats. One is called Klassekampen and hails from the old Marxist-Leninist political party. It is a quite normal paper these days — not too much revolution going on. It is also fairly good paper, especially on foreign policy. I notice that some people who come to visit at my house frown on it, when they see it on my table … but yes, it is a paper worth reading (when not being able to get the real ones form abroad. Those arrive a day late. And news ought to be fresh. The second paper comes from the opposite political side of the spectrum, and is called Dagens Næringsliv. I would also consider that a newspaper, especially for business news. But again it is a bleak substitute for The Financial Times. The colors (pink) match, but that´s about it. And then there is Dag og Tid a periodical paper dedicated to the preservation of the Norwegian Language (the part of it that is not inherited from Denmark).
I like that one, mostly for its grits. Not good on foreign policy — in fact, not really great on anything. But it has the feel.
They feel like papers — and that´s about it. My local paper in my home city is a paper I never read, and neither do I read the national daily from Oslo — because they are simply too predictable. Like the national TV news they simply do not provide a sense of a news worth the money. It takes five minutes to walk through them, and I can read them in my office and listen to TV on my phone, when doing dishes. My wife complains I am not doing enough of those, so generally — I may be out of touch with the news from home. Just not worth the money.
But here I am, touching the paper, trying to see what´s at the other end of the table. A paper completely unfit for reading on the subway, like any decent paper ought to be. Thank you, NYT.
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