As a child, I was a voracious reader. With little to no technology allowed in my house, I would read anything and everything I could get my hands on. That included a plethora of library books and Barnes & Noble finds – if I could convince my parents that spending $30 on a hard copy was worth it and not a waste of their hard-earned money. There were also the National Geographic magazines that appeared every month in our mailbox, wrapped like a personal present in pretty protective plastic sleeves. If things got desperate, I’d succumb to reading cereal boxes.
My need to have my hands wrapped around some form of literature, lest I face even a moment of boredom, led me straight to the pantry for my fix. Rice Krispies, Raisin Bran and Honey Nut Oats were all deemed suitable reading material when nothing else was readily available. I’d read about whatever prizes were advertised, I’d read the cheesy crossword puzzles and, in truly dire moments, I’d read the ingredient list. Nothing was too boring or mundane, no word too uninteresting or underappreciated by my young self.
I did most of my reading at the kitchen table during meals. This is where I fell in love with the newspaper. Every Monday, my family paid for our local paper to land on our doorstep, and every Monday, I’d eagerly flip through it, scanning every page to ensure I wasn’t missing out on any of the local goings-on.
I especially loved the comics and cartoon pages. Those tiny tidbits of humor felt like inside jokes between me and the illustrator. I worshiped the sound the thin, pulpy pages made when I flipped through them. In a similar, yet different way, I loved the smooth, slick, scientific feel of the National Geographic magazines that lay on the table, always open to a different page, next to the news.
Most of the National Geographic articles were way beyond my depth of understanding, but that didn’t stop me. I read, never skimmed, every word and never skipped a page. Every sentence was a treat; every full-page photo, a prize for my persistence. Maybe the next picture would be a jaguar gazing down from a tree, or a coral reef in Kool-Aid blue waters, exploding with color and variety. Regardless of the adventure that awaited me on the next page, I took my time with the text. I soaked it all in, basking in the serotonin that flooded my brain with the flip of a page.
Eventually, though, something changed. One morning in middle school, most likely in 6th grade, I realized my breakfast felt empty. It felt boring. I realized something was missing from my morning routine: the newspaper. My parents stopped ordering it. No more comics, no more pages to flip through.
When I entered high school, I turned to my school’s library for solace. My high school received different copies of popular print newspapers, always a few days behind. Anytime I had a free period, one could find me tucked away in the small corner of our library, flipping through the pages, soaking in as much information in as little time as possible. Pretending all the while that print media wasn’t disappearing, slowly but surely.
Now, as a senior in college, my mornings start with my Keurig coffee, a sacred part of my daily routine. Sometimes I think about how nice it would be to drink my coffee with an actual newspaper in hand. As a young girl, nothing seemed more adult than that: coffee and the morning paper. But to my dismay, no paperboy bikes up the stairs of my apartment to deliver a newspaper, and I’ve yet to order a subscription for myself.
I have, however, subscribed to Vogue. One perk of the death of print has been that magazines have dropped their subscription prices down to next to nothing, sometimes only $2 a month. For something so artistic, so thoughtfully and beautifully composed, I find this astonishing and somewhat dismaying. Every time I pull the newest Vogue from my mailbox, I wonder how the people who make it can possibly survive on so few returns. The New Yorker presents the same story. So much art, time, effort and energy, for so little revenue.
As Julian Novitz wrote for The Conversation, “Online audiences have come to expect new content daily or even hourly. Casual readers are less willing to wait for a weekly or monthly print magazine to arrive.”
He also goes on to note that as a result, there is a growing fatigue with digital media and news. Perhaps the people crave a return to the normalcy and tradition of printed text. We want to hold something other than a phone in our hands. Maybe we crave the flip of a page, the smell of freshly printed paper and the time for reflection that print encourages.
Print forces a slowness. Perhaps we need that slowness today more than ever.
When you read the physical newspaper, there are no notifications, no pop-ups and no links pulling you to a different site. You read what’s in front of you and the spread of the pages forces your full attention with conscious intention.
Sometimes I think about how much my love for reading came from boredom. There was no screen to scroll, no algorithm turning my eye towards what’s next, what’s new or what’s exciting. I had to choose for myself. I had to choose when to put the text down, when to pick it up and what articles to read. And that — choosing something unfamiliar, sitting with it, letting it surprise me — taught me curiosity. It taught me to sit, read and appreciate the physical.
Maybe that’s what I miss most about print: the forced lingering. The feeling that reading isn’t something to quickly consume and instantly forget, but instead, it’s something to sit with, to contemplate, to digest and appreciate.
I don’t think print will ever fully disappear. It might shrink; less of society might engage with it, but there will always be people who crave and appreciate it. Maybe one day, when I have my own kitchen table, my own mailbox and my own porch, I’ll have the paper delivered. Not because I need it to stay informed about current events – my phone ensures that I am – but because I want to remember the feeling that only print can give. I want to enjoy the news, the tradition of it.
And when I do finally get that newspaper, I’ll sit at my kitchen table, coffee in hand, and flip through the pages, enjoying the peace that only a paper in the morning can provide.
