Extra, extra read all about it

A small two-bedroom apartment above the Superior Laundry and Dry Cleaners on Tulane Avenue in New Orleans’ Central Business District was my childhood home. My family and I went downstairs to work and upstairs to eat and sleep six days a week. We opened at 6:30 a.m. and closed at 6:30 p.m.

That life ended for me when I began attending LSU in 1961. All I brought with me to college was a half dozen shirts, three pairs of pants, and an extra pair of penny loafers, plus what little knowledge the New Orleans public school system managed to drill into me during the previous 12 years.

One other thing I brought to LSU was my love of newspapers, which may be why I wound up with a degree in journalism. Starting when I was 8, my job was to “watch the front” as soon as we opened while my dad went upstairs and ate his breakfast. I never minded being downstairs in the morning while the rest of the family was upstairs because that gave me the first shot at The Times-Picayune. A voracious reader, I would lope up the stairs two at a time at 7 a.m. filled to the brim with the news of the day before downing my breakfast and heading off to school.

Now, more than a half century later, I wait in the dark in front of my house most days for the newspaper man to come rolling along throwing his papers just before 5 a.m. For me, that first cup of morning coffee just does not taste right unless it is sipped while turning the pages of today’s newspaper hot off the press.

Unfortunately, neither my wife nor my children share my high regard for the daily paper. Two of our four grown kids don’t even subscribe. I wonder what that is doing for my grandchildren and their need to become informed citizens of our community.

The young people tell me they get their news from the Internet or from television, but they don’t. Outside of “CBS Sunday Morning” and “60 Minutes,” examples of first class journalism are rarely displayed on television. Other than web sites posted by newspapers, real journalism is totally absent from the Internet.

A brand of yellow journalism that makes Horace Greely and his cohorts appear tame pervades electronic media today, with the exception of Jim Lehrer’s show on PBS five nights a week. The pervasive Gannet chain of local papers and USA Today are as gutless as a stuffed turkey. People in Baton Rouge and New Orleans don’t realize how fortunate we are to have locally-owned newspapers published in our respective communities. The folks in Shreveport, Monroe, Alexandria, Opelousas, Lafayette and Jackson, Miss., are not as lucky. They all get a daily dose of pabulum thrown in their front yards compliments of multi-billionaire Rupert Murdoch.

Be that as it may, newspaper circulation numbers are falling fast, and it is anybody’s guess how long it will be before I will wait in vain for the paper man to pitch yesterday’s news on my lawn. Right now the Republicans are pushing a highly controversial initiative that is supposed to be aimed at saving independent newspapers by letting them merge with television stations. We have had that situation in Baton Rouge for many years with the Manship family owning both The Advocate and WBRZ-TV Channel 2. For more than 50 years, the Manships also owned the biggest radio stations in town. They have always worked, however, to keep the entities disconnected and actively competing with each other, and we still have a fine newspaper.

Bottom line: The older I get, the faster things change. I know I have to accept it as just the way life goes, but please don’t make me read the newspaper on a computer screen.
I mean, what are we going to put on the table when we eat crabs and crawfish? And what other excuse do old men have for standing out in the street before daylight and talking if they no longer have to wait for the paper?

No comments yet

Username:
Password: