Sadly, printed news being replaced
In one’s quest for the daily news, competition and differing formats between newspapers and television broadcasts interfere with accuracy.
Jenny Specht

I grew up spending Sunday mornings before church perusing the morning’s paper and consuming cinnamon rolls and milk. My family and I would pass sections back and forth, the most popular being the brightly-colored comics. Newspaper would be strewn throughout the family room and all over the floor.

Today an Einstein’s bagel and latté have become my fare, but armed with the Star-Telegram, I continue the ceremony in a somewhat modified fashion. Sunday mornings are relaxed, a time to catch up leisurely on an entire week’s worth of news which had been merely skimmed over on busy weekday mornings.

A friend of mine is surprised at this weekly ritual. “I didn’t know people still did that,” he told me.

I never realized everyone didn’t.

His view is shared by many. In this age of advanced communication, the newspaper is unique in its tangibility. Headlines, once printed, do not change. Meanwhile, events swoop swiftly in, unexpectedly.

Last Tuesday morning, I heard the news of what was to be the final sniper shooting. As I walked into the Student Center, I reached into the familiar bin for The New York Times and realized that it lacked the information I sought. The “current” issue had already become obsolete.

Reluctantly, I turned on CNN later in the day. The network’s chief problem is its inability to be held in your hand; its secondary flaw is the endless repetition of news that one must listen to before any new information is released.

I learned the facts of the story, yet still I ached for my familiar friend, who too often is relegated to its other uses — as a rainhat; as a window-cleaner; as packing filler. The newspaper has many uses, yet exists in my mind as a more complete picture of the news than shown on television. Not only articles, but advice. Not only editiorials, but entertainment.

There are substitutes online. These sites are updated throughout the day, making the information more current than that released in the morning.

Should format matter? To the average information consumer, shouldn’t the primary evaluation of an information source be its ability to provide facts and details?

I must then introduce another complaint against other news sources: Portability. While waiting the seemingly endless minutes for the Worth Hills Express bus, the newspaper is there. While sitting in class, a few minutes early, a newspaper can be pulled out of a backpack.

I waver between my choices. I try to do both. I read The New York Times while watching CNN. I end up being distracted by the presenters’ hairdos and realize, half an hour later, that I have learned nothing.

I ache for those endless Sunday mornings when everything is clearly printed in front of me. It seems that dramatic world events seldom take place in the wee hours of dawn to disrupt the accuracy of what I read.

The rest of the week, however, is left to choice: competing formats, fighting for the reader’s attention, each offering something unique, but nothing offering something whole.

Jenny Specht is a senior English and political science major from Fort Worth.