It’s Saturday. The weekend. Time to pause and lean back a
bit. Get some errands done. Catch up on a little reading. Maybe sneak a nap.
March. Last full month of winter. Snow piled up a little
along the walks and driveway. Still no leaves. Birds, though. We have birds.
Some birdsong is springsong. You know it is. When you hear it.
The newspaper is written, to the printer, off to the post
office, into the mailboxes. Another issue survived. So much to write and
disseminate. So few pages available. Lots left un-inked. The way of today’s
press culture.
Only a few years ago a newspaper had many departments –
business, sports, fashion, health, politics, classified ads, opinion…the list
goes on. Nowadays we may say we have the same departments, but we really don’t.
Very little is written in those sections. Oh, we print some of the material,
but not very much. Eventually entire sections are deleted for the day or week.
One wonders if they will ever return?
No. The newspaper of our times is mostly a guide to the
electronic news channels. The radio, internet or cable TV shows are where the
news is these days. At least they want you to think so. Actually its opinion
passing itself off as news.
I prefer the days when we could read and ponder an issue. No
conclusions today. Just pondering. We would allow the material to steep for
several days or weeks – months even. Eventually we’d come to some conclusion or
other; just not then. And we would still reserve space for changing our minds
if new data arrived for our pondering. We actually changed opinions from time
to time back then!
Do you suppose such is done today? Do we have all the
information needed? Not just tonnage – actual information that is formative,
even seminal. Information that helps us build ideas and understanding.
Do you suppose we will ever get back to that? Ever?
March 2, 2013
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