My Local Newspaper is Dead to Me, and I Miss It

For almost my entire adult life, I have subscribed to my local newspaper. My morning ritual included fetching the paper from the driveway, flipping through the pages while sipping coffee or tea, setting aside the sports section for my husband, and usually laughing at the Dilbert cartoon. I put up with the inconvenience when the newsprint became so thin that it curled up at the edges unless it was weighted down. I was even willing to pay the 20% price increase, even as the publisher reduced the size of the ever-shrinking product by a larger margin, just to get my morning information fix from the physical, analog world.

But when the Arizona Republic laid off the brilliant political cartoonist, Steve Benson, it was the last straw. I couldn't possibly support an institution that cast off its best talent like, well, yesterday's newspaper. When I reluctantly called the parent company, Gannet, to cancel our subscription, the call center attendant asked why. When I answered, "Because they fired Benson," she mentioned that she had been hearing that a lot lately, and asked who he was. She was in Kentucky, she explained, so she had never seen our newspaper.

The first few paperless mornings, I paced aimlessly around the house to consume the time while my tea steeped, time normally dedicated to fetching the paper from the end of our long driveway. I stared at the basket where the old papers used to be, as if one would magically materialize. Taking the recycling bin to the street later that week, my husband said wistfully, "This will be the last time I take newspapers to the curb."  But we thought we would soon become accustomed to reading the news on our tablets, doing crossword puzzles online, and eventually shake the urge to reach for the print edition.

Six weeks later, however, I still miss the paper. I still wander the house aimlessly while my tea steeps, and my attempts to flip through the headlines on my tablet only leave me underinformed and the device smeared in butter from my morning toast. I'm too easily distracted by email, and by tabloid headlines that don't leave me any smarter than I was the day before (although I can name a few more Kardashians now). My husband, too, confessed yesterday that he feels much dumber without the daily paper.

So here we are, caught in the limbo of an economic boycott that the target probably doesn't know we're staging. After all, it is clear that the publisher is trying to kill the print edition by eroding quality and content while increasing the price. So maybe, just maybe, the best way to get our economic revenge is to re-up the print subscription until the presses simply, and inevitably, one day grind to a stop. I might just need to get that nice lady from Kentucky on the phone.