Yep, this is pretty OT, but maybe it's also something a lot of us can relate to.
For years I had gotten daily delivery of a rolled-up paper newspaper plopped on my driveway every morning, with the ritual of my then going out to pick it up, noting the weather outside while doing so, then returning inside the house to read it over a cup of coffee. A perfectly natural thing to be doing. Had been doing so for years.
I had always felt a sort of natural affinity for a paper copy of a newspaper. Maybe that's because when I grew up in the 1950s newspapers (and paper ones were the only kind we had back then) were a big deal. Back then, if we wanted news, we had to get it from either (1) newspapers (2) radio, or (3) primitive TV (and I mean
really primitive, like in only three or four grainy black-and-white channels, which weren't always all that regular, on an old aerial-operated TV). That was it.
So for getting information on the day's events, reliance on the daily paper newspaper brought into the house every day was essential.
Plus there would develop a sort of comfort pattern in bringing in that daily paper newspaper, spreading it over the kitchen table, and reading through it while drinking the morning coffee, as noted above. Especially on a Sunday.
But then something happened. I had begun to notice over the past year or so that the cost of this traditional, comfortable information source had been steadily rising and rising over the months. It had gotten to the point where the quarterly bills for it were starting to show some pretty
hefty increases from bill to bill. It finally got to the point where I even called the circulation department to inquire as to why.
The answer I got was what I would have guessed it would be. I was informed that pricing for
paper newspaper copy had gone into a vicious cycle, with subscribers dropping out because of increasing cost, resulting in a subsequent need to raise price to compensate for this, resulting in more subscribers dropping out, then another price increase, etc.
When I asked about
the ultimate cause of this cycle, the answer I got was also what I would have expected. People can get the same information for free now from any number of electronic sources. Why pay for something that's slow in coming to you when you can get the same information immediately and for free simply by pushing a keyboard key, people were thinking. The circulation person I talked to even went so far as to inform me that if the vicious cycle referred to were to get bad enough, they will likely begin to consider dropping the paper copy altogether.
Sadly, It was with some reluctance that I ultimately decided that I, too, would have to join the others who had bailed on paying for the paper copy. It really was starting to get too expensive. It had indeed become a luxury from the past, a sentimental artifact from another era, to be frank.
Hardly the only thing that the age of automation has displaced, and may well be ending, but also symbolic of the extraordinary ways that computers are changing everything.
Actually, truth be told, the new electronic ways of promulgating the news, and information in general for that matter, really are better. For example, and it's an example very relevant to us, in using electronic sources, the Internet prime among them, one can learn more about
a PCa topic in an
hour than would have been possible spending
days on the topic searching only print copy, including paper copy newspapers.
So something is lost, but something better is gained. That's the way it always is.
So farewell, paper Gainesville Sun, it was nice knowing you.
(But that's okay. I can still get your electronic version. For FREE!)
https://www.gainesville.com/BTW, just out of curiosity, how many of you still subscribe to and receive a paper copy newspaper? How much would you really like to keep on doing so, especially if an eye to the rising cost of it had to be made?