People of my generation continue to be the main users of print newspapers. I suspect this goes back to our childhood when we were given “My Weekly Reader: The Junior Newspaper” each week in our classrooms. We were also regularly required to bring in an article of our choosing from the newspaper to share in the segment of class called “Current Events.” In 7th grade, we were given $100 in imaginary money to “purchase” shares of stock. We then were expected to track the performance of “our” stock every week by looking it up in the newspaper.
For most of my elementary school years, the only things I knew about current events came from newspapers. Our town had two, one in the morning and one in the evening. The evening one was more labor friendly and was aimed at workers coming home after their jobs. The morning one was more conservative and was aimed at business men getting ready to face the day. While each reported similar news, the evening one also seemed to include more crime stories. The morning paper had the stock performance charts. Neither was as pointedly biased as several cable television channels are today, however.
So newspaper reading was purposefully instilled as a habit from my earliest school days. No on-line source still satisfies me as much as opening the morning “New York Times” and settling down with my coffee and toast. No on-line source has ever replaced the pleasure of getting the crossword puzzle to start my day. And no television newscast allows me to skip over stories that don’t interest me. I may be one of a dying breed, but I will go down reading my paper.
Saved By Words 
I remember My Weekly Reader! The name is very familiar, but I forget the structure of it somehow.
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Very simple stories with big pictures. I would love to look at it now and see what news they thought kids should read back then.
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I’d love to see it too.
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If I ever find a “vintage” copy, I will write about it.
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I confess, I tend to prefer the digital copies of almost everything, but that’s because I have moved a lot in my life and the digital items are what I can take anywhere with me. I get all my news online from reading. Not a fan of TV/video-format news. I’m just not very good at watching things.
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I still clip newspapers. Old habit.
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That seemed like a good start, an early training to play in the stock market and also be updated with current events.
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Nice post Elizabeth. We subscribe to newspapers and my wife reads them. I visit online papers.
Perhaps one of my objections to print paper is the way they are folded. You can’t easily open and all together.
Then the distributor earns additional money by stuffing leaflets of different sizes and all start flying out when you open the paper.
However there are some good uses with used papers
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My uncle read the paper on his commuter train. I was in awe of the way he carefully opened and folded it without interfering with the person seated next to him.
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Exactly. But the stuffed in inserts fly out now.
I remember when I was working in London and commuting by train, people queue in the convenience store for newspaper and coffee and read it in the train.
I have been with almost the same passengers every day, but none smiles or speaks. So much for the stiff upper lip
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Funny the rules we adopt for different social settings.
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Indeed
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I have never read the newspaper, Elizabeth. I have always read news on-line. Interesting.
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I think you are in the majority today.
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For some reason the smell of a newspaper has always given me a headache. It made doing those current events projects in school more of a chore. I like that not only can get your news from the papers, but they serve other purposes once you are done with them.
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I always liked the statement that one paper was only good to line a bird cage. A real dig.
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