Like a carburetor, is the daily newspaper now a dinosaur?

I too, am a dinosaur. I read the first 7 pages of my local paper daily. (After that it is sports) Once they offered online delivery, we quit getting a dead trees version. Last year the dead trees version started using the US Mail.

 

My attention span doesn't seem to allow me to read complete articles any more. I try though. Mostly I breeze through (our local freebie paper), then tuck into the crossword and Sudoku at the back.

 

My fascination with sudoku was very brief. But now with smartphones, image analysis and brute-force solutions:

Sudoku solving algorithms - Wikipedia

I could imagine taking a picture of one and watching an 'app' solve it. Saving precious intellect for unwinding TP rolls or whatnot.

 

That's the phrase I would put above the gates of hell.

 

We have the NY Times crossword puzzle on her iPad.
If she reads me clues while I am driving, I can do a Monday puzzle but am hopeless on Tuesday puzzles. (besides the obvious difficulties of not seeing the squares and homonyms, she is MS born and bred whilst I am from the PNW, so accents get in our way.

Seeing the puzzle, I can do Tuesdays easily.

 

Even though newspapers are more fleeting than books, and are printed on less-refined paper, they share a tactile essence that video screens have yet to kindle.

Unimportant to readers, but for me in science editing, I always make final marks on printed pages spread on a table. One can see what each thing says and how relates to all others. A pencil (a most primitive instrument) can create fine final balance.

All such might be doable with >meter-scale videos and haptic gloves, but not by me.

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When last did you hear 'manual' typewriters? Were there several, so different operator's rhythms might be heard separately?

Old ways of textual, textural communication seem headed for the bin. Including newspapers, and readers without typesetters in their extended families miss out on even more texture in this transition.

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Lorem ipsum...

 

I've learned that there's no such thing as a 1-paper town. Once a city loses its second-to-last newspaper, the last one remaining loses all quality and becomes a hollowed out ghost of an operation.

 

When I was a kid, my Aunt bought me a 1928 Underwood typewriter. The massive upright ones, that now get displayed as antiques in peoples homes. It weighed a ton. BUT it was actually an amazing piece of equipment. Very bullet proof. Tough.

I used that typewriter through late grade school and all the way through High School. Remember staying up late nights literally pounding out term papers on that typewriter.
Brush on "White Out" was my Auto-Correct.

I think I got a "Word Processor" when I graduated from High School. Even it was now obsolete by todays standards. It wasn't Microsoft, it was a Sears pieces of equipment, where you could ONLY compose on a amber screen, then "send" to the attached typewriter like printer.
I learned all it could do, and used it for years as well.

Now with computers, printers, and Auto-Correct and even software that automatically corrects grammar mistakes?
I think we've reached a point where someone could be nearly illiterate, sit in front of a keyboard, and put something out that looks a lot better than it deserves to look.

I don't know if that's good.

My 1928 Underwood was primitive, but a good teacher.

 

my dad was a typewriter repairman for the local air force base. he trained at ibm in syracuse, and saw the change from manual to electric.

typing class was mandatory when i was in school. there's no such thing anymore.

 

Oh trust me we reached that point in the early 1990s. Since then we've applied the same to flying airplanes, surgical medicine, governmental operations, banking and well, you name it.

Sleep tight!

 

Scary and sadly true.
How do you promote hands on actual learning, when we live in an age where you can instantly look up almost any information? When we have tools that Add, Multiply, Divide, as well as now almost instantly write for you? How does a teacher know if a student is actually writing the piece or is using a Grammar software?
Does it even matter?
Does it become an unfair advantage to students that have the resources to own and access these tools above and beyond those that might not?

I was one of the few students in 7th grade, turning in papers that were typed. BUT...I still had to write and compose them on that 1928 typewriter.

Reminds me of the recent news story, where a school in the UK found that students couldn't tell time on analog clocks. But instead of teaching the students how to tell time, they brought in digital clocks.
I'm afraid of a future where the "skills" of day to day living and survival, are mostly how to use and access software.
We already have voice activated "aids" that instantly answer our queries.

Some day we can all be total idiots, and nobody will know except our computers.

 

Typing class...in High School was mandatory for me as well.
I remember thinking it was going to be an easy class for me, because I had already learned to type on that 1928 Underwood.
True Story, I showed up for the first class, and they had IBM Selectric Typewriters.
My typing "touch" was adjusted for the rather hard press of the 1928 manual typewriter. So I sat down in front of the wonder that was the Electric IBM typewriter, started to type, but evidently was pressing the keys way too hard. Somehow like a scene from a teen comedy, I caused a short in the typewriter, suddenly there were sparks, flash's and I burned out the typewriter.

It still ultimately was an easy class for me, once I realized I should use a much lighter touch than I had been using with the ancient manual typewriter I owned.

 

Like a carburetor, is the daily newspaper now a dinosaur?
Absolutely not!

Anyone who has more than an urban-sized patch of grass to tend to still relies on carbureted ICEs because the alternatives are still cost-prohibitive.
Most motorcycles on the planet are also still carbureted, those being concentrated in the parts where they are relied upon for transportation - and not entertainment devices for elderly or adolescent males - which is to say, most males who do not have mortgages.

Newspapers?
Oh HECK yes!

They are dead and gone.
Both physically and virtually.

Since more of the “news” outlets now follow the NYT model (All the news that fits, we print!) the remaining physical newspapers are mostly small-town ham and eggs affairs being run by recent college grads or just infotainment outlets much more concerned with getting THEIR point across than real street reporting.

 

I have a thought experiment for that- could you do whatever it is you do now if you had to start over with the previous generation of the process? What about the generation before that? It says a lot about the robustness of the business operation.

I think it's smart for a business to have a crash plan to allow them to continue operations even after the loss of whatever technology they depend on. That often involves keeping the previous iteration of the technology around and maintained etc. That's not always possible, but it's something I pay attention to.

Every cook in town uses 50 year old methods without thinking about it.

Lots of journalists still know how to use reference libraries and fax machines.

But there are a few moneymaker careers out there which might be a bit trickier to translate.

Does it matter? Honestly I'd say no, most of the time it doesn't. But in exceptional circumstances it makes all the difference.

 

Talent goes where the money is......

 

I.e. you still are a kid, at least compared to me.

And me too.

We had half-and-half, switching half way through.

Stepdad initially skipped the computer era, planning to pass away before actually needing to adapt. When modern medicine had other plans for him, he eventually trapped me into buying him a computer one afternoon earlier this decade. He dismissed my protestations, in part claiming that he was an excellent typist back in his day. (I had never witnessed him typing, it was before my time.)

After getting the computer home and set up, it took only a minute to determine that all his 'excellent typing skills' pre-dated the IBM Selectric. He was stymied by the lack of a carriage return lever, and never fully grasped the Enter key. His Underwood Standard (which I first learned on) was older than yours, from the Great War era. (a.k.a. WWI, for the youngsters out there.)

He went on to type up some of his sermons on the computer (someone else had to run the printer for him), but then lied to me about how much he was(n't) using it until after the Costco return policy had expired. But it isn't being wasted, it means we kids don't need to bring our own when traveling for an elder care / farm work shift.

 

The later, of course :


Having grown up in a rural culture and hunting well before puberty, I didn't learn that there was another meaning for 'rack' until much later, after moving to an urban area.

And that 'new' one is still not the mental default when I hear it.

 

There are other ones??
Hmmmmm.

I asked the googles about racks and magazine covers and all they showed me were display shelving....

 

My 1970 Farmall 140 garden tractor has carburetor, generator, coil, and distributor points. It is more modern than some of its ancestors since it has hydraulic lifts for the plow and cultivators.

 

Farmall was the Lamborghini of Rock Island, Illinois.