Literary-Writing News
Technology may eliminate most of the newspapers for this guy to read
I suppose in a world where high-tech UGG boots have pretty much replaced the craftsmanship of hand-made footwear, and now various hand-held electronic gadgets are threatening to replace (HA!) real books — I suppose in that world it’s just a matter of time until there are very few real newspapers left for a guy to read.
I may have mentioned over the last couple of years that our local daily newspaper is becoming a mere joke of its former self. The publisher has compacted it to just two sections instead of four for two weekday editions. They’ve even cut back the word counts permitted on “voices” op-ed column submissions from readers. (Personal note: Several people in the newsroom there I worked with proudly some years ago were forced out through early retirement and/or staff cutbacks.)
But our local daily paper at least has survived drop offs in ad revenue; some of the nation’s larger papers are not doing so well. The “Rocky Mountain News” went under recently, leaving Denver a one-paper town. (Another personal note: My first “job” as a young teenager was delivering the “Denver Post” newspaper — looks like they won.) I believe I read awhile back that one of the San Francisco papers went bankrupt, as did major papers in Chicago and Seattle.
What’s happened to all the papers? Can you say “free news on the Internet”? In some cases, as with the “Rocky Mountain News” and I think the “Seattle PI,” newspaper websites will continue even after the daily papers themselves have halted printing.
Disturbing trend, moving from hold-it-in-your-hand-and-shake-it-in-your-fist daily newspapers to online newspapers? Yeah, I think so. It really takes the fun out of newspapers for me, anyway.
But maybe I’m just an old curmudgeon. I dunno. I really don’t have time to talk anymore about it right now. I’m headed over to nytimes.com to see what’s happening.
Mailer’s death diminishes American writing and ‘letters’
Norman Mailer died yesterday, one of the first truly “modern” American novelists and a pioneer in “protest journalism” whose work stands as an important legacy.
Although Mailer’s chief aspiration was to write the fabled “Great American Novel” that would tower over all other American novels, his work about a Vietnam war protest, “The Armies of the Night,” which won him a Pulitzer, has been credited with launching the genre of “the new journalism” — investigative reporting written with “novelistic” passion.
Mailer was boisterous and egotistical, but he had a quick wit and sense of cynicism that served him and America well. Good writers, indeed all writers, will miss him.
Ah, well, what do I know? I’m just a guy who reads the papers.
[tags]Norman Mailer, American fiction, American novels, American journalism, just a guy who reads the papers[/tag]