Thomas Jefferson famously said that given a choice between government without newspapers or newspapers without government, "I should unhesitatingly prefer the latter." The gathering, digesting and distribution of news, especially with a Jack Webb "Just-the-facts,-ma'am" approach, in his view, is that critical to maintaining a viable society.
We are now in a period of hyper-change in our information systems, however, and the survivability of printed newspapers, just as that of printed books, has come sharply into question.
My own preference remains to troop out to our paper box on the street early each morning and retrieve a fresh edition of The Herald-Dispatch, just as I enjoy having the several magazines to which we subscribe land in our mailbox on their weekly, monthly or quarterly schedules.
Yes, I read plenty on the Web -- news from MSNBC, The Washington Post, Reuters, The Associated Press and a number of online political digests -- Politico, First Read and Slate, among others.
Nothing that appears on a screen, though, seems to substitute for the pleasure I get leafing through a broadsheet such as The Herald-Dispatch or The Charleston Gazette, coffee mug in hand and choosing what I will read among the 20 or so headlines scattered over two opened-up pages.
Newsprint, after all, is a renewable resource. Publishing newspapers and magazines keeps legions of people at work in forestry and trucking, and besides, reading print on paper does not come with the radiation emitted by a computer screen.
Jefferson, too, would probably have been a mite suspicious of what would happen to the news if it were not actually printed out on paper you could rustle in your hands.
The real reason we're likely to hold onto printed newspapers, however, is advertising. Thus far -- though they're trying -- media outlets have failed to convince advertisers that ads on the Web site pack as much punch as ads printed in the paper. Auto dealerships, just to take one example, are very fond of those full-page spreads with enticing headlines and copy pitching 20 or so cars at a time. Realtors, though, do seem to be relying on the Web to walk prospects through a house with a virtual tour.
As a reader, I don't mind ads packed around news or feature copy. That's par for the course. But when I'm online, I get very ticked off when a flash ad breaks into my reading and in effect tells me, "Get your nose out of that hot piece of political news and pay attention to this great deal on ink cartridges for your printer."
"Scram!" I shout at the ad and click back to my perusal of the news.
Some things just need to stay the same. And printed newspapers are among them.
John Patrick Grace has been a newspaper reader for 60 years. He is now a book editor and publisher and lives in Huntington.
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