Fine print

I've read newspapers my entire life and have wanted nothing more professionally than to write for one. Beating deadlines, asking the tough questions, wearing a fedora with the "Press" card sticking out from the side - what's not to love about the life of a newspaperman? (That term is no longer politically correct, of course. We in the business prefer "stewardess.")

Sadly, I might be the last of a dying species. More people are getting their news online than from any other source, according to various reports I've read online. The Internet is fundamentally changing journalism, and all of us in the newspaper business are still trying to figure out just how big we need to make Sudoku puzzles in order to turn a profit.

The death of the print newspaper is a matter of "when," not "if." Some people believe the last print editions will roll off the presses by the end of the decade. I already can see myself shedding a tear in my flying car when that day comes.

So I decided recently to begin preparing for the worst. I gave up up reading newspapers for one week. This meant no sports section with breakfast, something else to occupy my time in the bathroom and purchasing wrapping paper for the first time.

My ban included one important exception: I still read the comics every day. I can imagine a world without newspapers, but I choose not to think about a world without Beetle Bailey.

I began my newspaper fast on a Sunday, my big newspaper reading day. Big Newspaper, probably fearing the loss of one of its last young, loyal subscribers, somehow convinced the Obama administration that night was ideal to announce Osama bin Laden had been killed. I sensed this was not going to be easy.

Yet somehow I managed to avoid reading newspapers all week. The hardest part was picking up the newspaper on my doorstep each morning. It practically cried out for my warm embrace, but I quickly threw it in my recycling pile and zeroed in on my Cinnamon Life.

The best part of the week was not dealing with newsprint. There are so many fingerprints on door frames in my house I could hold several sections of a forensics class. (My mom, in her infinite wisdom, always wondered aloud why my dad and I didn't use doorknobs. I'm not sure, but I believe it's related to the fact neither of us can find things we're looking for that are directly in front of our faces.)

Not reading newspapers also cleared my schedule. As a journalist, I find newspapers to be a sort of continuing education resource, so I tend to read every word of most stories to see what works, what doesn't and maybe pick up a story idea or two. Sections of Sunday papers might last me until Friday. Naturally, I spent much of my free time trying to cut down the pile of Esquires I had yet to open.

Interestingly, I didn't read more news online as I thought I would. I wondered if my consumption of print media fed my consumption of Internet news and vice versa, a chicken-and-egg kind of relationship. Or, perhaps more accurately, a dodo bird-and-egg relationship.

That was the sad realization I had at the conclusion of my experiment. There will probably be a point in my lifetime I won't even have the option of giving up a newspaper. It'll just be gone, like Beetle whenever Sarge is in a foul mood. Call me a romantic with blackened fingertips, but I find something very comforting about holding the daily paper in my hands.

So I will keep reading newspapers until the last one rolls off the presses. I just need to figure out what to do with all of this gift wrap.