Not Books - Newspapers

[Guest]

I love me a fresh newspaper. Especially if I can get a good one.

Getting a decent newspaper where I live is like playing the lottery; I have to time my arrival for the delivery or keep driving into the next town.

I want a real newspaper, a big floppy sheet of newsprint that I can fold and refold and read thrice, going back for the nuggets I had overlooked when I set it aside the first two times.

When I am staying in one area while travelling, or passing through repeatedly, I like getting the same newspaper and reading about the continuing tale of some corrupt local politician, zoning battle or local sports powerhouse as the story advances between newspaper nabs.

I have some favorites around the country. The Fayetteville Observer is a great regional paper. Heavy on the local military, religion and HS sports, but that local stuff is very well written.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fayetteville_Observer

The Gainesville Sun is more tabloidy, but still entertainingly composed and readable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gainesville_Sun

The Tucson Daily Star is OK, but I miss the old Citizen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucson_Citizen

I will still pick up a NY Times or Boston Globe (Herald?) if in the area, but I’d prefer the best regional rag when travelling. I avoid reading about inter-urban megalopolis city life just like I avoid going into that hell, especially when travelling in less frenzied areas.

Got a favorite newspaper where you live, or one to look for when you travel?

 

[red langford]

I too love a good newspaper. The big Sunday or Saturday paper. Love spending hours browsing it's pages over a few coffees, listening to the radio. I love to read the funnies, the real estate, sports stories and mostly the crosswords. We don't get a paper up here but once a week and it's deadline is Friday and is available Wednesday so I call it the history paper because nothing in it is new.

 

[stripperguy]

I too love a good newspaper. The big Sunday or Saturday paper. Love spending hours browsing it's pages over a few coffees, listening to the radio. I love to read the funnies, the real estate, sports stories and mostly the crosswords. We don't get a paper up here but once a week and it's deadline is Friday and is available Wednesday so I call it the history paper because nothing in it is new.

Except for the delivery schedule, that could have been written by me!!
I still subscribe to the Albany Times Union, but only have the paper delivered on Sunday, all other days I read the online version (the real one, not the cheapo freebie)

 

[Odyssey]

A High School geography teacher of mine gave us a term project one year. He opened a huge cardboard box full of newspapers from Jamaica. He'd travelled there, fell in love with that island, and subscribed to a newspaper. There must've been 2-3 years worth. We were to each choose a current event topic and study it, through the Jamaican news coverage. That was when and where I began my newsprint travels. I've loved out of town or out of country newspapers ever since. Wherever we go I pause to pick up a local paper, just to taste some local flavour, and put my fingers on the pulse of neighbourhood heartbeats. I have no favourite paper. I'll read anything and everything. My brothers from eastern Ontario and N.C. drop a few papers and magazines into a pile here for me whenever they visit. We three love to read, and each of us have our particular likes. Mine is rather eclectic, but when I dive into a newspaper I'm not looking for the headline news as much as the current events with a bent for human interest stories. Such as : An 80 year old having his memoirs recorded and published as a joint venture between an Alzheimer's support group, a Senior's Home, and a College journalism class; a lady finally fulfilling her dream to open up her own artist's studio; the life and times of a retired barber, who's a local amateur historian; a lawyer who's spent 30 years constructing a scale model railroad in his basement, it being a complete replica of a section of a Rocky Mountain scenic route...people's stories go on and on.
Roaming the internet for local gossip and local news, just isn't the same as sitting on a porch with a real paper leaning against a coffee pot on a sunny Sunday morning.

 

[Guest]

A High School geography teacher of mine gave us a term project one year. He opened a huge cardboard box full of newspapers from Jamaica. He'd travelled there, fell in love with that island, and subscribed to a newspaper. There must've been 2-3 years worth.

While I was in NC this past month I exhausted my most recent newpaper buy and, since I had plenty of beer and no reason to leave, didn’t feel like driving 20 miles to get a fresh paper.

I found a stack of July 2012 papers in the bunkhouse. Virgin papers, unread and untouched for near 3 years. I read ‘em and it was quite fun to revisit some of those old national and international stories with year’s knowledge of those bits of recent history turned out.

 

[stripperguy]

This reminds me...
This past weekend I was working in the basement of one of my rental properties. Tucked in a storage area, in a wooden barrel filled with leftover coal, was a stack of Troy Record newspapers. Most were from the '60's, headlines about LBJ and such. A couple from 1956...I haven't had time yet to go through them, but I'll photograph all the pages, the paper itself is rather fragile. In one of the flips that we did, I found other Troy Record papers dated from 1895...very different style of journalism back then. One of the articles from 1895 described a robbery, but not in the terms we would think of today. The article spent much time describing the perps wardrobe, seriously, no mention of weapons, methods, items stolen, just a head to toe fashion statement!!

 

[Guest]

This past weekend I was working in the basement of one of my rental properties. Tucked in a storage area, in a wooden barrel filled with leftover coal, was a stack of Troy Record newspapers. Most were from the '60's, headlines about LBJ and such. A couple from 1956

One of the things I did many years ago when my friends first started having kids of their own was to buy the day’s newspaper (an extra actually). I didn’t tell the parents, just filed it with the kid’s name and waited ‘til some milestone birthday, 18 or 21, to give it to them.

My sons have theirs somewhere, but it’s a rare kid who is interested in a newspaper, even one timed to that personal day in history.

 

[smallworks]

My husband once found a bunch of Daily News from WW2 under the linoleum in a house he was working on. The paper smoothed out the plank floor before they laid the linoleum down. The funnies were in good condition... news and photos vivid yet faraway, incredible to realize this was not so long ago.
We also like to read the local papers wherever we are, especially the letters to the editor, and Pennysavers. That's where we found our pup.

 

[snapper]

I too enjoy reading a real newspaper. The college I work at has a "Readship Program" in the dorms where the students can pick up, for free, a copy of the NY Times, USA Today and the local paper called the "Daily Star" (which many of us refer to as the Twinkle because it's not bright enough to be a star!) The idea behind the program is to establish a new generation of actual newsprint readers instead of on-line viewers.

When my daughters went to college in Boston I began reading the Globe whenever I could get my hands on it because that is a "REAL" paper to me. I used to read it on-line but have gotten out of the habit for the time being. Now I see it whenever I visit my daughter who lives outside Boston. The last time I was there I got so immersed in it (I was reading a special section on my beloved Red Sox) that I didn't even know she was trying to have a conversation with me. My wife told me later that she asked me a few questions, realized I wasn't listening or paying attention to anything but the paper and decided to put her efforts elsewhere. I felt like a jerk so I wrote her to apologize but I guess the family just thought it was funny.

The other type of newpaper I enjoy reading are the ones left behind at a lean-to, in an outhouse (I do look it over carefully from afar before handling it), etc. It's
interesting how much an old paper can enlighten you; especially when you've gone a few days or weeks without seeing one.

That's all for now. Take care and until next time...be well.

snapper