NEWSPAPERS GOING OUT OF BUSINESS

I was just reading about several large and very old newspapers folding under with the current financial situation. They have been coming up short for a number of years, but managed to survive until now.

I remember as a young man about twelve years old, delivering the Birmingham Post and the Birmingham News. In those days, the newspaper was as important as the internet is today.
It's sad to see such a great institution going down the tube, but you can blame it on the kind of "news" many of them reported. They were biased, and with many stories omitted because of the liberal slant. Also, the changing technology has a lot to do with it.

I remember hanging around the "Boaz Leader" newspaper as a child, totally engrossed in watching the Linotype operator as he set the type for each addition. I got really interest in newspaper publishing and actually printed my own papers on a small press, complete with hand-drawn cartoons and advertising. It wasn't a lucrative business, and I wasn't a good business manager, so it was short-lived, but my interest in the printed media still lingers today. I am now seventy-three and still writing. I have written two books and have a lot of stuff on the internet.
It was all inspired by Mr. Leroy Sumners at the Boaz Leader.

Mr. Sumners and that newspaper are long gone, as many small town papers are, however, there are some small town papers that are doing quite well, and that I love to see. Community oriented and unbiased reporting is still the secret to success.

There's a lot to be said for the modern way of printing and distributing information. The internet allows anyone to have his views aired. Sometimes they are things that shouldn't be aired, but free speech is important.

Who knows what is coming next. There are always new innovations, many that displace something that was used earlier. Take the typewriter. I wrote my first book using two electric typewriters, but I learned to type on a manual one. They're all obsolete now. I started using a computer in the late 1980s and it also quickly became obsolete. We have to upgrade to better ones frequently.

CDs and DVDs came along and they have now proven to deteriorate over five years (those you burn yourself, not those that are pressed, as in rented or purchased movies). I mention this so that others will perhaps not experience what I did. I put my old film movies from the 1950-1980 on DVD and thought I could store them forever. I recently discovered that some of them wouldn't play. I was able to process them to get the data off into my computer and then burn new copies on improved DVDs. The improved ones are guaranteed to last thirty years. That's an improvement, but I'll only be 103 and I'll have to retrive the data again.

Oh well, can't win 'em all!
Jay Hartline