They wouldn’t print it if it wasn’t true
Here’s the scenario. Imagine that your grocery store has two floors. If you live in New York City this will be easier for you, but work with me here. And that the elevator is kind of old and creaky and slow and the button is hidden behind a display but it doesn’t really matter because the unit is in constant usage and thus you can rely on people inside pressing the buttons and ensuring its arrival. Once inside, people fit themselves in like a Tetris game for the 20 second ride. Usually, I just take the stairs (I can’t imagine maneuvering a cart around this narrow-aisled, super-crowded place) but either way, it’s no big deal.
Can you imagine a less interesting blog post that what I’ve just described in the last paragraph? And yet The New York Times, the newspaper of record, the staid Gray Lady, put that on the front page on Saturday. I have a weird relationship with the print media industry. That is, I see it the way the rest of you see the music industry. I subscribed to the daily NYT from my first year of college (my family were subscribers so I suppose you could say I’ve read it since I could read) through 2007. That’s when I realized I read so many news blogs and online papers that all I ended up doing with the physical paper was throwing it in the recycling bin. I still get the weekend Times (I’m thinking of stopping, though), thus me seeing this on the front page. Like your relationship with my own dying industry, I not only feel like I can get what they sell for free on the Interweb but now I’m beginning to feel it’s mostly crap anyway.
An article about my grocery store’s elevator? Really?
A Slow New York Passage, Up to Organic Food
Title comes from:
Joe Jackson – Sunday Papers
While I just read the Times online most of the week, I still love the ritual of taking apart the paper on Sunday morning and reading it over the course of the day (and saving my favorite sections for last). 20-some years later, I still discard the Automobile and Sports sections on the first pass…
All the news that’s fit to print…won’t fill our paper, so we added this.
I don’t like reading newspapers online. I like paper, especially the Sunday paper, and one with comics. Which is why I’ve never gotten into the NYTimes. It’s sad how the newspaper is dying, like the recorded music industry. Just about everyone over–what is it now? 30? has great memories of spending hours in the record/CD store. One of my happiest childhood memories is going to the big town on a Sunday afternoon to the bookstore, a rare treat. My whole family would go a few times a year and we’d buy the St Louis Sunday papers (they had 2 then) and read all the great baseball coverage with pictures, which our local newspaper lacked. I can still smell the newsprint. Sigh…
I get the sunday newspaper. It arrives on my doorstep in a plastic bag. I bring it into the house and dump it in a pile next to the front door. Every few weeks I scoop up the pile and take it out back to the recycling bin.
I actually enjoyed the article about the cantankerous little grocery store. Reminds me of the one a few blocks from my house, except it doesn’t have a second floor. It needs one though. Maybe people would shed their nasty little attitudes if they had more room to spread out.
I guess I find people and their ways very interesting. I’m a psychologist at heart.
BTW, Did you know today is Buy A Newspaper Day? Thanks for reminding me. I think I’ll buy a NYT in honor of this blog post.
ooh ooh, check this out:
http://niemann.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/i-lego-ny/
I used to be of the school of thought of how great it was to curl up on a Sunday morning with the big fat paper but it’s really changed. Now, I much prefer sitting with Big Mac on my lap and reading the paper, looking at my forums, scanning FaceBook, checking e-mail, and playing Freecell. When I have just the paper in front of me these days, I get itchy. I have the attention span of a … look, something shiny!
PS, I was in the Fairway elevator this very evening. No one mentioned the article.
kb, cool!