For those of you reading this in print, what were you thinking? You went out of your way to grab a paper off the stands or dig through dusty archives when you could have just as easily found this pretentious thing on our Web site.
This is an exciting time for news media. Internet news is the way of the future, providing us with video and sound clips, interactive options and comprehensive coverage through hyperlinking to external URLs.
And that's just what 2007 has to say about it. Someday, the Internet might be an antique and something even better may have replaced it. We won't even remember what it was like to wait three minutes for a news page to load or to search for wireless access locations in Starbucks.
But I think International Herald Tribune's Lauren Cabell said it best when she spoke to a group of student journalists this past week. "You can't replace a newspaper," she said. "I need to sit down in the morning with one and some coffee."
That's an image that, I think, will last as long as the news. You can sit down in the morning with your coffee and scroll through a Web page - you can even do it in a cozy caf?(c) on lunch break or in front of Saturday morning cartoons (what's left of them).
But even if you download the news and print it out, you can't replace the feel of newsprint in your hands. Photo spreads, opinionated columnists, the very smell of the ink and paper. And you can take it all with you on your daily journey, in newsprint, or save up a stack of your favorites to flip through later.
It isn't nostalgia that's keeping print news going - it's a need for a certain kind of news. Something human that's mostly left unsaid. The Internet gives us options and access and resources, but it can't replace a newspaper.
You can download books these days, too.
Check out eReader.com for example, but be prepared to ping your PayPal account if you want to get the goods.
I recommend the science fiction section.
"I dunno, there's just something about a book, isn't there?" asked Dimitri Anastasopoulos with a shrug and a laugh during class.
The man is talented, an English professor, and even he wasn't able to verbalize what it is that makes us need our media in print.
Can you? What made you pick up this paper?
For a lot of (let's say, for example) students who grab a copy of The Spectrum, it might just be that it was there, waiting for them, on their way to class. Something to do under the table while the NTR lecture stretches on into lunchtime.
As long as this campus houses students interested in news journalism, this newspaper will always be here waiting for you. Whether or not you plan on reading what we have to say, the press will march on and tell the stories of the day.
And that goes for professional papers, too. They're not working to please the majority or to entertain - they leave that to Comedy Central. Newspaper editors grind out what they find most newsworthy whether or not they know people are sitting down to read it with a cup of coffee.
Perhaps that's what we find irreplaceable: whereas Internet news must be intentionally sought out, clicked, downloaded, printed, purchased, searched and scrolled through, the newspaper is just there.
Or maybe people are just bothered by the flatscreen eyestrain.
People have their reasons for sitting down to read, even if they're unable to say why. I believe that newspapers, magazines, newsletters and books will be around forever, even as libraries go all electronic and Web editors begin making bigger salaries than the ones working in print.
The weight of a novel in my hands is something I'll want for the rest of my life, and it's just not as pleasing to scroll through nytimes.com rather than flipping through page jumps in print.
This isn't a call to action, readers. Don't change a thing - we won't. Go about your day, drinking your coffee and typing on your laptop in Starbucks.
Whether or not you decide to pick one up, the newspaper will be there for you.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
