Of Earth and Stars

thefridayfive

1. Did the house where you grew up have a newspaper delivered regularly? I don't specifically remember this, though I do have vague memories of searching for and poring over the Sunday comics, so at some point we must have either had a subscription or picked the paper up from somewhere. I have stronger memories of magazine subscriptions - copies of Time or Newsweek (before Newsweek took its swan dive) and National Geographic that would arrive to the house, glossy and shiny, and we'd save stacks and stacks of them for school projects.

2. Have you ever subscribed to an actual print newspaper? No, but oddly enough, when we lived in Smithfield, there was a "free" town paper that was distributed. It was mostly used to line the shelves of the crispers in the fridge and to support the boys' science projects.

3. When was the most recent time you physically picked up and read a newspaper? Our local grocer still carries the state newspaper - occasionally I'll pause to read the headlines, mostly to see what they find newsworthy, but I haven't bought a paper in years.

4. Do you pay for news online now? No. I often think that I should pick up at least one subscription - perhaps The Guardian or The Atlantic. Most of what qualifies for print journalism in the U.S. is disturbingly controlled by money incentives which are complicit in our political decline, which is in part why we are where we are. I do vaguely wonder if lack of subscriptions for news drives the dependence on more nefarious moneyed interests, but it seems ads and revenue have driven the papers, and subsequently the politics, for time immemorial.

5. Do you have any saved newspaper clippings? Perhaps somewhere, amongst my parents' old things that I am unable to part with - I have a few photo albums from their house that may contain newspaper clippings from our childhoods - things like science fair wins or academic awards that published to the tiny local paper. But beyond that, I haven't carried on the practice as an adult.