The Friday Five
Mar. 9th, 2025 02:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scrubjayspeaks1. Did the house where you grew up have a newspaper delivered regularly?
Yes, the LA Times, daily. Which is something of a wonder, given we were a ways out of town.
2. Have you ever subscribed to an actual print newspaper?
As part of the household, to whatever degree that makes it my subscription. Unfortunately, at my current house, the delivery was so unreliable (I think we had something like six months of credit at one point from missed deliveries) that we eventually gave up. And the newsstand prices have become so outrageous, especially in light of the anemic state of print papers, that it stopped being worthwhile.
3. When was the most recent time you physically picked up and read a newspaper?
It's been a few years now, sadly. My dad used to sometimes pick up free copies from work at the end of the day, when they would otherwise be destroyed.
4. Do you pay for news online now?
No. For the most part, I follow individual journalists to keep up with their work, plus whatever gift links are passed around social media on a given topic.
The thing I liked about print papers was that I got a little bit of everything and could stumble upon interesting things that way. As readership fell, newspapers decided that cutting back on content would somehow save them. So the print papers became steadily less interesting. And now, the websites of papers, even setting aside the paywalls, seem actively hostile to that sort of browsing. Everything's got to funnel you toward the clickiest clickbait parts.
More importantly, though, I've become so disgusted by the editorial choices of many papers (NYT, anyone?) that I have no interest in financially supporting them.
5. Do you have any saved newspaper clippings?
Yes, there are still a few posted up on the fridge. Mostly comic strips. I used to love the comics. Not just the Sunday color ones, but the weekday black and whites. In elementary school, one of my go-to choices at the yearly book fair would be comics collections. Calvin and Hobbes, Garfield, Farside, and Bizarro all got read to the point of total spinal collapse.
Mum probably has more saved away somewhere. We used to have some advice column clippings from many years ago. There was one about communicating with one's children that said it was better to answer your child's hollering to you with "yes," rather than "what." Something about putting both of you in a more positive frame of mind, more open to whatever is about to follow. For some reason, this always stayed with me and is something I do at work all the time. Make of that what you will. :P
Yes, the LA Times, daily. Which is something of a wonder, given we were a ways out of town.
2. Have you ever subscribed to an actual print newspaper?
As part of the household, to whatever degree that makes it my subscription. Unfortunately, at my current house, the delivery was so unreliable (I think we had something like six months of credit at one point from missed deliveries) that we eventually gave up. And the newsstand prices have become so outrageous, especially in light of the anemic state of print papers, that it stopped being worthwhile.
3. When was the most recent time you physically picked up and read a newspaper?
It's been a few years now, sadly. My dad used to sometimes pick up free copies from work at the end of the day, when they would otherwise be destroyed.
4. Do you pay for news online now?
No. For the most part, I follow individual journalists to keep up with their work, plus whatever gift links are passed around social media on a given topic.
The thing I liked about print papers was that I got a little bit of everything and could stumble upon interesting things that way. As readership fell, newspapers decided that cutting back on content would somehow save them. So the print papers became steadily less interesting. And now, the websites of papers, even setting aside the paywalls, seem actively hostile to that sort of browsing. Everything's got to funnel you toward the clickiest clickbait parts.
More importantly, though, I've become so disgusted by the editorial choices of many papers (NYT, anyone?) that I have no interest in financially supporting them.
5. Do you have any saved newspaper clippings?
Yes, there are still a few posted up on the fridge. Mostly comic strips. I used to love the comics. Not just the Sunday color ones, but the weekday black and whites. In elementary school, one of my go-to choices at the yearly book fair would be comics collections. Calvin and Hobbes, Garfield, Farside, and Bizarro all got read to the point of total spinal collapse.
Mum probably has more saved away somewhere. We used to have some advice column clippings from many years ago. There was one about communicating with one's children that said it was better to answer your child's hollering to you with "yes," rather than "what." Something about putting both of you in a more positive frame of mind, more open to whatever is about to follow. For some reason, this always stayed with me and is something I do at work all the time. Make of that what you will. :P
