Sunday paper

The Sunday paper is more Mary’s thing than mine. Most weeks go by without my touching it except to toss it along with the other accumulated recyclables into the bin by the garage.

It’s not that I don’t like reading the paper but rather, I just don’t like reading this paper. The Seattle Times has for a long time been one of my least favorite media channels, partly because it’s Seattle-centric (okay, I get that) and partly because its editorial positions leave me cold.

One of the things I like about frequent business travel is that in most of the hotels I visit, copies of USA Today and whatever the locals read are there for the taking. I enjoy the expanded view of national issues and events that only a newspaper offers and the local papers are invaluable in helping me understand the region in which I’m working or teaching.

Anyway, this morning dawned cool and breezy, a lovely morning and after feeding the mongrels and making coffee, I asked Mary for a quick look at the front page – the Times in bed being something of a ritual for mi esposa. And I thoroughly enjoyed what followed.

I read the long, lead article on the growing marijuana industry in newly-pot-legal Washington State. And let me just say this about that - $60.00 for an eighth ounce makes me wonder just how much more potent is the current crop as compared to the fifteen-for-a-three-finger-bag weed that was passed around on Tuesday evenings during Monty Python at Lance’s house gatherings?

It was fascinating, actually. And worrying. I’d no idea how big the business of toking had gotten. And the combination of big money and psychotropic  drugs is, as I say, worrying. I learned a lot from reading the article.

Another piece highlighted the efforts of a black IT techie to bring more blacks into the tech world. I put that one aside to read more in depth later and you may well hear of it again in this blog. Fascinating.

The obits were of interest mostly for the sake of confirming that most of the recently departed were older than moi by at least ten years.

I really did enjoy the morning spent reading the paper. But I’m not likely to make a habit of it. Much as I prefer paper books to electronic versions in my NOOK, the electronic reader is here to stay. And I find myself progressively less enthralled by news of current events and the devolving political scene than by TED Talks and blogs on topics of particular interest to me.

The demise of the home delivered ‘paper’ paper is the fault of folks like me who’ve stopped subscribing and thus make the medium less attractive to advertisers. I get that.  But I’m not inclined to read a generally unsatisfactory rag just to help keep an industrial anachronism alive.

I’ve moved on. And this morning, I was reminded both of what once was (the in depth article from which I actually learned something) and what has come to be (most of the articles were not of interest and not well written).

Sorry, Times. You’ve lost me. And we can both agree that’s a shame.