2/21/14

All the NEWS THAT'S FIT TO PRINT


Are there are any newsboys left? Is there somewhere that a kid still stands around hawking the latest headlines? Face it, newspapers are just about a thing of the past and that just makes me sad. With the loss of the daily delivery the paper routes of the past with a kid on a bike flinging papers willy nilly at houses is also but a blip in history. I think most papers are delivered in the early morning hours by someone in an old VW or Toyota with the driver's side window permanently down.

If newspapers cease publishing actual hard copy I think it will be a terrible loss. I'm old school. I like holding the paper, sitting on the floor with it spread out in front of me, folding it up to read one article more intimately. And I love cutting things out of the paper that catch my eye and stuffing them away with hope that sometime in the future I'll find them again and not have to ask myself, "Why they heck did I save this?" I have newspaper clippings going back decades. I've even got interesting obituaries of ordinary people who had extraordinary obituaries. It's not the same when it's digital.

A digital newspaper is more about advertising in your face than a hard copy paper. You tend to just scan for the items that interest you, clicking on links that rush you past things you don't care about. Seriously, does anyone peruse the obits in a digital newspaper? I'm guessing that only people looking for a specific obit ever look at them.

And making a pdf of an article and sticking it into a folder made of ones and zeros just doesn't cut it. It never yellows with age and if you trash it you can't go back later and see it laying in the trash allowing you to think, "Well, maybe I'll keep this for awhile."

This weeks Sepia Saturday, a haunt I've had to forgo for the past months, has a photo of three gents in suits with the center guy holding some papers. It immediately made me think of this shot taken from the collection of photos I purchased at the Betty Schnabel estate sale last year. The fellow on the left is her father, who I think might have worked in some capacity in the oil industry. I have no information about the newsboy or the fellow on the right. I'm guessing that's a train station in the background in Rawlins, Wyoming.


Click on image to see it larger.

What is it about the newsboy that seems to fascinate or annoy Betty's dad? The other guy seems to have bought a paper and is happy to have his photo taken with the kid. But why take your picture with the newsboy? Why was this shot taken? Okay, I really don't want you to waste any time or brain cells on this question, it's just something that occurred to me.

As far as my headline/title of this post...these days most of what gets "published" online isn't worth the ones and zeros it's "printed" on.

This is my submission to Sepia Saturday.

29 comments:

  1. I am a pretty casual newspaper reader and only get it once or twice a week. I like having the newspaper to hold and flip through without reading it in order or searching.

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    1. I always want to read my favorite sections and columnists, but usually find something else grabs me as I peruse past the ads.

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  2. Gosh, I remember the days even when the newspaper boy would come and collect for the paper!

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    1. Me too. I remember in one neighborhood in the '70s the paperboy was the grandson of a man who was once on the Supreme Court. That kids was efficient!

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  3. ...and this was in the 1980's still!

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  4. One usually sees pictures of newsboys wearing flat caps. I believe this is the first time I've seen one wearing what appears to be a slightly rumpled fedora.

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    1. Perhaps his grandfather's old hat. I have one that belonged to my grandfather that I still wear when I'm out stomping around in the orchard.

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  5. When I was in junior high school (Now known as middle school.) we had to take a course called problems of democracy. (Civics in most states.) The main requirement of the course was to read the newspaper everyday of the weak. The Pittsburgh Press in my school. When we decided to stop fully funding public education, civics was an early casualty. Part of it was money, part a belief by many conservatives that civics had a liberal bias. If the habit of reading a newspaper doesn't start early, it never starts.

    Too, take a closer look at your photo. That's not just a railroad station in the background. They're at the station waiting for the train. The metal railing is the edge of the platform. The brick sidewalk is a dead giveaway. Steam warped wood and turned dirt into mud.

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    1. I had forgotten about that. Civics class. I enjoyed bringing my clipping to school to talk about.

      And thanks for pointing out that they are indeed waiting for the train. Somehow that slipped right by me.

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  6. The little newspaper boy isn't smiling either...might have been something the man said to him, who knows....

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    1. Indeed. Probably baffled by it and when he went home and his mother asked how the day went he mutters, "Two old men from the East Coast took my picture." "What for?" "Who knows. They're from the East."

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  7. An interesting snap that looks only partly posed and I think the two men could be brothers or certainly traveling together. Why buy a second paper when you can read your pal's on the train?

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    1. Perhaps Betty's dad is thinking, "If I grab that whole stack I won't have to share."

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  8. Betty's dad really wants the newsboy's hat. I'm with about having a real paper in my hand, even if every other page is given over to adverts these days.

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  9. I agree about the newspaper although I do more digital readoing...and I too am a clipper. Who knows why and to make it worse, I never find what it is I think I'm look for once I've clipped it, but often run across something more interesting. It does make me said to know the newsboys are no more...

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    1. I used to keep all my clippings in a folder called Bits 'n' Pieces in my filing cabinet. Back then there were a lot fewer clippings than what I've got now. I still enjoy the obits. I also love the ones that had typos.

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  10. Fine post. I sold newspapers on the street when I was a boy. I was never as well dressed as the boy in your photograph. I carried 20 papers which I sold for five cents each. If they sold quickly I went back to the newspaper office and got another ten.

    I wonder if that hat really belongs to one of the men.

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    1. Did you do the "barking" of "paper, paper, get you paper"?

      I also thought maybe the hat belonged to one of the fellas.

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    2. Yes. I hollered the name of the paper as loud as I could with my voice that was just changing.

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    3. I'm hoping the crack in the voice caused people to stop more often and buy your papers.

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  11. Great photo. As for newsboys - I suspect it is an iPad App for collecting together on-line news.

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    1. Funny you should say that because there is a very popular app that was created by a fellow who I remember as a young kid coming to the MAC user group meetings I used to attend. He is the creator of Flipboard.

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  12. Was he caught by a headline as the breeze fluttered the papers perhaps?

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  13. I notice you still have word verification switched on as well as comment moderation. It's mostly numbers now - not words - and and makes commenting quite a chore. We've just about eradicated it from Sepia Saturday now, apart from newcomers, most of the regulars have kindly switched it off. We've been discussing it on the SS Facebook page and agree that not allowing anonymous comments and only having comment moderation for posts more than seven days old seems to cure most ills. Please won't you consider joining us?

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    1. Sorry, but with the type of traffic I get outside of Sepia Saturday it's too much of a pain to deal with. If I only had people from SS showing up it would be one thing, but even with it on I still have to regularly go through and delete stuff. And anonymous people can leave posts. I get them all the time.

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  14. I'm old-school about some things too. Don't give me a Kindle -- I'll take a paperback book, thank-you.

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  15. I had a couple of newsgirls in the 1980s. They only wore hats when winter winds blew.

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    1. I've never seen my delivery person. They come in the early morning hours and seem to drive a stick shift.

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