On the Demise of Newspapers

I won't pretend I have anything new or interesting to say about this topic. Print culture is dying, and no one is reading newspapers anymore, and more and more are folding under as the days pass. The usual things can be said.

But the things is, print culture isn't dying. People are going to read books. People are going to want news. And maybe, yes, the morning paper over coffee isn't what it used to be. And maybe, yes, more people are reading on their stupid iPads and phones and online, even though it hurts their eyes.

Today, I tried to open a New York Times article at work, and it seems that this IP address has already used its allotted twenty free articles this month. Twenty. My problem isn't with paying for the newspaper. Or the fact that a subscription is--for most media--necessary.

Actually, wait. My problem is with paying for the newspaper. I understand, fundamentally and integrally, that print costs money. Newsprint, newsreels, people to operate the machines as they spin around, spitting out hot paper and ink, there are costs involved with that. And there are costs involved with reporters, and servers to run www.nytimes.com But what really makes it difficult for me to swallow is the restriction of information, to those with means and access and money. Sure, I could pay 99 cents for four weeks' worth of unlimited access (including a free iPhone app!).

And someday, I'm sure I will. I'll buy the newspaper, and I'll donate money to Planned Parenthood and to public radio and the National Endowment for the Arts, and I'll make sure I only buy local produce, in order to support my community's farmers and also to reduce my carbon footprint. But for now, while I'm pinching pennies and packing my lunches with cheap leftovers, I'll go to BBC for my news, thank you very much.

Prompt: What I did on my summer vacation

Response:

I am spending the month of June doing a lot of this:


combined with a little bit of transformers, remote control cars, beaches, and swingsets.

I'm currently in the middle of a short-term nannying position for the month of June, with two kids who are here visiting their father for a few weeks.

We spend most of our days outside, wandering from park to park and beach to beach. We've made bread, and strawberry freezer jam, and cookies, and colored pictures of princesses. We've played a game of marco polo and I've struggled to get over my constant need to keep beach blankets and towels from being covered in sand.

Needless to say, I'm exhausted. And taking care of two kids for ten hours a day really puts a hamper on your ability to read French theory and write a thesis. I mean, who can even think about posthumanism when you've got two actual humans to keep track of?

Cheer up sleepy (Ashley) Jean, oh what can it mean, to a daydream believer and a homecoming queen?

People, I am coming home. Yet again, I am homeward bound, heading home to where my music's playing, home where my most of my loves lie waiting for me.

I can't wait.

And despite my incredibly ability to wax poetic about the jewels of the Pacific Northwest here, amongst New Englanders and Southerners and those oddballs from the mid-Atlantic area I know, I find myself incapable of pulling together a coherent blog post about the fact that I am coming home.

I guess that is perhaps due to the fact that most of you reside in the PNW anyway--and I don't need to tell you about the merciless lack of bugs, about the ways the sun sets over the water (as it should), about the way that Mallard's ice cream tastes after one of those rare hot summer days, about the way it feels to drive south on I-5 and see Seattle for the first time again--because it always is the first time, no matter how recently you've been there.

Three years away and I am coming home.

I'll see y'all on August 5th. Get. Ready.