Newspapers: Now and Then

One of my friends told me that he purchased a home-delivery subscription to the Washington Post. Noting how reasonable it was, he said that he wanted his daughters to see him reading a newspaper. While he could read the Post on his phone or a tablet, they might not know what he was reading. He knew quite well that his daughters might never hold or read an actual newspaper. More than likely, they would read some electronic version of the news and it will look vastly different from what we would call a newspaper. Nonetheless, he wanted his daughters to see that reading the newspaper was something he valued and, whatever form it took, they would do the same.

Steinman Park, Lancaster, Pennsylvania 

It was something of a coincidence that the following weekend I would find myself in Steinman Park in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where a bronze statue of a man reading a copy of the Lancaster Sunday News, sits near the offices of the local newspaper. The man has a pipe in his suit jacket as he reads a copy of the 16 September 1925 edition of the paper, turned to a page with the headline, “Workmen Leave Permanent Record of Liquor Strike in 1815.” Since the article appeared during prohibition, it makes the story all the more intriguing. Laying beside the man on a bench sits two more editions pf the local newspaper waiting to be read, with men walking on the moon (1969) and the accident at Three Mile Island (1979).

I like newspapers as well. One of my great pleasures is sitting in a library thumbing through old newspapers or skimming microfilm copies. Some of the stories are incredible. It is not that I disparage new technology; in fact, it offers wider access to many of these great stories for those who look. But the format of how news is delivered does make me wonder what will become of these great archives and the treasures they hold.