Opinion | 10 reasons I want my news in paper

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, an important American newspaper with a significant history related to the desegregation of the South, announced last week that 2025 will be the final year it is delivered in paper form.

The newspaper that Poynter owns, the Tampa Bay Times, has gone to twice-a-week (Wednesday and Sunday) delivery, with significant sections being reduced or deleted.

I am no expert on the economics of news, but you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. The enterprise of news continues to face two intractable problems: the erosion of its business model, dependent upon print advertising; and the countless attempts by ideologues to undermine its credibility.

As more people — especially a younger demographic — encounter the world on their phones, newspapers as objects are disappearing, along with many of the journalists who created them.

I grew up in New York City and Long Island, where the local variety store, called the Sugar Bowl, sold maybe a dozen newspapers. We read the Daily News and Newsday, a paper I once delivered, a paper that published my first newspaper story.

I will not wallow in nostalgia except to remember Sunday morning rituals, after Mass, in which we gathered around the kitchen table, dividing up the rolls and bagels and sections of the Daily News. I preferred the sports section with exploits of Mickey Mantle, the rotogravure (color magazine), and, of course, the funny pages, featuring Dick Tracy, Joe Palooka, Li’l Abner, the Phantom, Prince Valiant, and, my favorite, Brenda Starr. (She was a reporter and, OK, she was hot.)

I would be the last person to advise a publisher on how to create and sell the news, and I know the elimination of the traditional model saves the costs of paper, printing and transportation. But I know, at the age of 77, what I want. I am not the only one.

I want news organizations that can manage it to print at least one edition of the newspaper at least once a week, either Saturday or Sunday. Here’s why:

1. There is still money in the pockets of aging Baby Boomers, who enjoy their hands on paper. Our money can subsidize the cost of creating digital innovations.
2. There are still advertisers — national and local — who want to attract this geezer demographic.
3. We old folks — who have raised families and built homes — have a stake in a geographic community that younger potential readers lack.
4. The newspaper creates a sense of community when the news medium is a thing that you can come across, even if it is only now and then in a coffee shop or doctor’s office.
5. You may use your phone for lots of things, but the newspaper is about the delivery of information in the public interest. That said, there are indeed auxiliary applications: wrapping packages, stuffing crumpled pages into wet sneakers and, yes, lining the bird cage.
6. You can clip newspaper stories and photos into work that lingers on the door of your refrigerator. (Try sticking your phone on the refrigerator door.)
7. You do lots of things with the newspaper with your hands: work on the puzzles, set aside the comics, go through the ads looking for bargains, saving a section for a friend or neighbor.
8. Holding a newspaper, to quote media scholar Jay Rosen, is like holding an owner’s manual to your membership in a particular geographic community.
9. Reading newspapers is not just about the transfer of information. It also has a ritual quality to it, a way of gathering a community together to celebrate (when your local team winds a pennant), or mourn (after a mass shooting), or come together to help neighbors (after two hurricanes in 13 days).
10.  New technologies will have their way, too often without sufficient consideration of the unintended negative consequences. Having a Sunday paper will help us keep in mind the things we treasured from traditional ways of doing things, so that we will not give them up without a good reason.

As a writer (this may be selfish), there is a special sense of achievement that comes from seeing your name in print: in the newspaper or magazine rather than just its website, or on a book cover rather than just its digital version.

Many years ago, at a lunch table at Poynter, I made a bet with my dear friend and colleague Don Fry. He proclaimed, as was his habit, that the newspaper as an object would disappear in our lifetime. We shook hands in front of witnesses. The stakes were $1,000. Don passed away a couple of years ago, so I guess I won, but maybe we meant in both our lifetimes.

Don was more right than I was in seeing a bleak future for the paper news enterprise, especially the loss of news resources. But I ain’t dead yet. We have an American pope. I do believe in miracles.