It’s five thirty in the morning, Sunday, July twenty-first. I’ve been up since two a.m., reading an actual newspaper. I spent hours reading the Wall Street Journal, relishing the articles and opinion pieces while my hands held the flimsy, but comforting, pages in my chubby fingers. My mind has been too active this morning. I needed other voices to tire it out. It worked. Now sleepy, but with the sun rising slowly, casting a pale light on the foggy Tennessee fields around my home, I find myself intellectually stimulated and overwhelmed by information. I love newspapers.
My love affair with newspapers started during my college year. Some people say, “college years”, but mine was, basically, one year. One does not graduate after one year. One gets married and goes to work after one year. Or at least I did. No regrets, mind you. It’s what I wanted, and I wouldn’t have changed it for anything. While I was there at Arkansas State University I started reading the newspaper on a regular basis. Specifically, the Arkansas Gazette. It was a state-wide paper based in Little Rock, and had a conservative slant, which I found appealing, since I was a Reagan Republican at the time. Still am, I suppose. I miss Ron. It wasn’t the most popular outlook at a liberal arts college, at the time. When I wasn’t in class, or when I skipped class, I’d go to the local used bookstore and cruise for reading material. There was also an arcade on the other side of the street which took a lot of my spare money. If I had any money left after those two favorite haunts, I’d get myself some off-campus lunch. My favorite place to eat was a little further down that street. It was an old barbecue joint, where I’d order up a “Jumbo” pulled pork sandwich and large crinkled fries and a coke. As you go into the place, you’d notice a newspaper box right by the door. I started buying one to read while I ate my lunch alone. I had a small group of friends at college, but, for the most part, I was a solitary guy. So, I started reading the paper.
When you’re in college, you’re exposed to all kinds of new opinions, cultures and ideas that make quite an impression on your young mind. Two of my best friends were foreign students from Libya and Nigeria. They taught me how to hate soccer properly. They did that by inviting me to play a pickup game with them, whereupon they ran circles around me. Literally. To be fair, they had grown up with the game, and I had just started smoking cigarettes less than a year before, but I was still horrible. They made it worse by letting me know that they were pretty bad players themselves, but my playing made them look like Pele. I took it in stride, but it still colors my lack of admiration for the game. I didn’t hold it against them. They were great guys. You can keep soccer, however. They taught me not to judge people by who runs their country. I hope the rest of the world will give us the same consideration.
Enjoying the newspaper in a pre-internet world was awesome. I had a portal to the rest of the world, or at least a taste of it. Television was great, but you didn’t get the in-depth investigation into the stories like you can with the written word. Instead of reading between the lines of what commentators said, I enjoyed reading what the writers truly meant as I perused the lines themselves. All the world was at my fingertips, and on a weekly basis, no less. For the cost of fifty cents. Yup. I’m THAT old.
I know that, nowadays, information is faster, more diverse, and readily available on the internet. Free in many forms, for a price in other venues. Where I see the problem is that many people tend to believe everything they read. No form of press needs be taken for granted to be factual just because it made it to the publishing stage, in print or on the internet. Find many sources of information, electronic and print, and hold them to verifiable standards. Vet the opinions and fact checking. Take nothing granted but but soak it all up like a sponge. Then think on it. Balance the opinions, the stories, the facts and the angles and come up with opinions of your own. You may find yourself coming up with non-mainstream ideas and opinions, versus just following the guy/gal in front of you. That’s a good thing. You may just learn something along the way.
If newspapers are on the decline, it’s not the internet’s fault entirely. People want their facts to be spoon fed to them with no effort. Click on your app and get the latest blurb about the trending news and read all the short, one-liner quips about events that are complex, yet they’re boiled down to a few sentences by bloggers who give you the “cliff’s notes” version of the news. Stop it. Read. Read a lot of sources, whether online or in book, magazine and other physical forms. Local newspapers, as well as state and national. Digest them all and form your own opinion. It’s a little more work, but it’s worth it. You’ll be smarter for it. It may keep you up at night, I warn you. It may also keep you company when you’re already up at two in the morning. Either way, it’s worth the effort.
It’s six forty-six a.m.
Now I’m sleepy.
God bless y’all.
Rolling Stones 