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Save the papers
Newspapers, as you may have heard, are declining rapidly in value.
To take a recent example: In 2000 The New York Times bought The Worcester (Massachusetts) Telegram-Gazette for $296 million. This year the paper was sold for an undisclosed amount that industry analysts estimate was less than $15 million. That sort of decline in value hasn't been seen in Worcester since the Chevrolet Vega I drove as a reporter there in the '70s began leaking oil.
This isn't news. In 1981, when The Real Paper, an alternative newspaper in Cambridge, Mass. that I wrote for, folded, I submitted an article to The Columbia Journalism Review on its demise. The rejection letter I received said, in essence, thanks, but we get too many stories like this.
Those of us who saw the deluge coming were like William Shatner in the "Twilight Zone" episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," the only passenger who sees the gremlin out on the wing of the plummeting plane.
You - sitting there in front of the computer - are part of the problem. You've apparently decided that you're tired of reading the same Boston Globe story about tattooed professional women three times in the past 18 months, in each case with fewer facts than before. Funny, the female accountants, lawyers and MBAs I meet tend not to have "Wellesley MA 02481″ scrawled on their necks, a reminder of "where they came from," as one NBA player said of his return-address neck tat the other day.
Instead, you get news online where you can click a link and watch two guys dropping candy into Diet Coke bottles when you get bored with the two-civic leader op-eds the Globe likes to run.
I've been writing for newspapers off and on - mostly off - since high school, when a cracked vertebra tragically brought my football career to a premature conclusion. I wrote for free back then, so to me writing on the Internet is like coming home for Christmas.
I can't imagine a world without print. There are some places where you just can't go - at least not yet - with a laptop. This week I got a haircut and was trying to imagine what a normal colloquy with my barber would be like if newspapers ceased to exist:
BARBER: Canna you tilta your heada justa little?
ME: Sorry, I was doing a site search for "lacrosse" and "Blazers" to see whatever happened to Boston's indoor lacrosse team.
BARBER: Why donta you justa reada the sportsa page? Thatta way I don'ta get little hairs in your computer when I blow dry.
ME: Enzo - print - it dies.
BARBER: Too bad. You want gel on that?
I, for one, am not going to stand idly by while a way of life comes to an end. What follows is my guerilla plan to save print through hand-to-hand combat that you, dear reader, can you join anytime you want.
Buy two copies, throw one away. During the first Reagan administration humorist Roy Blount, Jr. suggested that we reduce the national debt by buying postage stamps and throwing them away. Maybe if writers bought two copies of every newspaper they wanted and threw one away, we could save print. Of course Blount's plan didn't work, but that was before there was the Internet to spread the word. If you wanted to read Blount back then, you had to buy Esquire. Not any more. Now you just log onto the Internet, type his name into your search engine and...never mind.
Pets. Pets are one of the key demographics that publishers neglected when advertising revenues were strong and things didn't look so grim. Try lining your parakeet's cage with a laptop, or house-breaking your Portuguese Water Dog using an Amazon Kindle - it's a mess! You'll be begging the nice telemarketer for The New York Times for a two-week free home delivery trial the next time she calls.
Diminished civility. Next time somebody at the soup 'n salad place where you eat lunch asks if he can have your paper when you're through with it, just say no. As you make your way out of your commuter train in the morning, pick up the discarded papers that other riders leave behind and throw them away.
If somebody complains, tell them if they want to read the news for free, they can buy a laptop, which is way more expensive.
- Con Chapman
Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer whose works includeThe Year of the Gerbil, a history of the 1978 Yankees-Red Sox pennant race, and two novels, Making Partner and CannaCorn(Joshua Tree Publishing). He is the author of 30 plays, 10 of which are published. His articles and humor have appeared in national magazines and newspapers including The Atlantic Monthly, The Boston Globe, The Boston Globe Magazine and Salon.com, and he's a frequent contributor to The Boston Herald.