IABC Executive Board Vice Chair Mark Schumann, ABC, just wrote a post about the demise of the Rocky Mountain News newspaper in Denver, CO (USA). I commented briefly on Mark’s blog about my own perspective, but want to expand a bit here.

I was born in 1958 and grew up when newspapers were the dominant source for complete news coverage. Radio news reports, to me, were the irritating, five-minute interruptions that always seemed to come just when I was starting to enjoy the latest rock or pop hits. TV news was visually interesting at times, but otherwise flat and stiff.

Reading the newspaper was a family affair. I remember squirming next to my older brothers and sister, to find a spot on dad’s lap, while he read the Sunday comics to us–and often had to explain the joke. As I grew older, we discussed the local and national news (Chicago is never short of controversial news!), and savored the razor-sharp writing and reasoning of columnists like Mike Royko.

My brothers and I delivered newspapers to earn money. One of the benefits of a morning paper route, that just barely countered the daily 3 a.m. wake-up, was the time spent reading the newspapers after the route was finished. There, in the agency’s poorly lit, barely heated back area, I would sit on a wooden shelf/bench and take my time, devouring just about every word in the two daily newspapers.

As Mark mentioned in his post about the Rocky Mountain News, there was something about the smell of newspaper ink on my hands that I just loved. The ink got into my blood, and I pursued journalism as a college student at Eastern Illinois University.

The journalism professors there were required to have worked previously as a professional journalist. I heard first-hand stories of life as a newspaper reporter: the exciting and rewarding, and the mundane and frustrating. I even got to get ink on my hands again, while helping to print and distribute the daily student newspaper as a fill-in volunteer when the regular press crew or delivery staff weren’t available.

I spent a summer working as an intern at the Decatur Herald & Review. Then when I graduated, I accepted a position there as a reporter/photographer. Although my bosses and coworkers were some of the finest people I have ever met, I left the paper after only one year, because I “wanted to see some mountains.”

I called a college friend and told him that I was planning to move to Denver. That friend said, “I’ll call you back in a few minutes.” When he did, he told me that he had decided to move to Denver with me!

We used the Rocky Mountain News to look for work. My friend was more dedicated, and quickly found a very good job. Me, not so much. After a few months spent laboring at some fun, but not lucrative, “jobs,” I moved back to Chicago, leaving behind a love of the mountains and newspapers in Denver.

Just last night, I discussed with my wife whether we should cancel our subscription to the Chicago Tribune. We just don’t read it much, and unopened newspapers too often get tossed in the recycling bin. But there is something about the physical newspaper—and the journalists who worked so hard to publish it—that makes it nearly impossible for me to let go.

But times have changed. Perhaps nothing says that better than the fact that the links I have provided here to the newspapers all go to electronic web pages. You won’t get ink on your fingers from typing in the URLs. Maybe that should make all of us a little sad.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 at 5:42 pm and is filed under communications, IABC, journalism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.