Change So Subtle, But Change Indeed.

Certainly considering the current backdrop of Americana, the news was not tragic but it saddened me
nonetheless. The opening sentence in the Decatur Herald-Review letter read: "Beginning August 17, 2020 the Herald-Review will transition from printing seven days a week to five days a week (Tuesday through Saturday)." Obviously, it is a business decision driven by a profit-loss reality. Slowly but surely another indicator of cultural change or more likely defined by generational cultural erosion.

From my East St. Louis growing-up days of the 1940's and 1950's, I recall the hawk-call of the early evening when a paper boy meandered the neighborhood streets calling out: "PAPER, Morning Globe!" And later the next day, you could peruse another St. Louis paper, the Post Dispatch or the East St. Louis Journal. No wonder why the Boy Scouts had an annual Paper Drive, we had papers!

I understand the instantaneous internet and cable television news availability and perhaps it's convenience, yet I also wonder about the greater incidence of today's stress, anxiety and the 35% increase of suicides in the United States over the past twenty years. No, I don't suggest that America's decline in newspaper circulation causes these aforementioned maladies, however it may be reflective of a society's larger decline, the loss of innocence, which gives way to cable news wrapped with angry agendas. Today's informational news is more often cloaked in a political philosophy begging one to view the events as how it affects 'Us' and 'Them' and suggests who's winning.

Old habits die hard and I'm an old guy with habits. Several years ago, the late sports writer, Jim Barnhart wrote a piece for the Bloomington Pantagraph promoting a book I had penned. During our conversation, I shared with Jim that I was not a big Internet news gleaner, but I still enjoyed turning the printed pages at my own leisurely pace and noticing ink left on my fingers.

A simpler place-in-time to which there is no return. The old man must get with it or get off the train.