1253 : THE PAPER BOY : Part XXI
• Keeping it local is keeping it real
The community paper is a noble endeavor but it needs to adapt to the times as it can get outmoded by the pace of information. By the time you read the paper the news may have already been updated in this hyper information anti-social media age. This feeds an activist mindset and culture if the dopamine rush gets you in real time information overload.
• Hyper engagement is the cocaine of this generation and everyone is addicted to it even if they are not self-aware. Somewhere there is a person sitting by a creek or a lake fishing with no phone service and he is completely missing out on all the things he should be afraid of or angry about. This might be the only exception to the vicious idea that ignorance is bliss. We all need to disconnect and detox regularly from this hyper media or we will lose our minds and our souls. The new age we are entering will require us to step outside of the matrix regularly to keep our sanity and our freedom.
Over the years and the printing press was sold off because the demand fell off and electronic delivery displaced the paper boys. The internet promise is there but with censorship has become a great deception. The gaps in communication between what people know about our government and what is really going on in our government are as wide as the Grand Canyon. The chasm between what’s going on and what people think is going on is also very wide these days.
Even if the local paper has great articles few read anymore. Even if the truth is out there most are distracted entertaining themselves.
~ EVEN IF THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE ~
Most Are Distracted • Entertaining Themselves
The vast majority either complaining that you can’t change things or it’s useless to even try. Headlines are not informative they are slogans. Yet we must face this and overcome this upheaval that may last for generations. The promise of technology will be our ruin if we are just consumers of bad information and not maintaining a truthful narrative that protects or promotes the social contract and the good. That truthful narrative is us being informed and using our discernment to find the truth on our own like it was in past generations. The local independent paper of record is essential for local news even if its part digital now local is real because it is closet to us.
• The future will be digital and analog. There is a lurch towards digital but that is clouded with tons of bias and conjecture these days. My grandmother taught me from an early age to be skeptical and she was right. Technology promises to transform the workplace and just like the trash truck has solved the back injury problems of old when the trash man had to dump trash by hand all day long.
• Technology still requires a person to use it and control it. It’s not automatic it’s a tool. There are fewer trash trucks and back injuries today just as there are many more jobs to manufacture and service the trash trucks today that are higher paying skilled jobs. The paper boy has given way to lower cost logistics that either delivers the news electronically or the explosion of E-books and modes that deliver newsprint and magazines like never before thought possible.
• The main problem is that we got lazy trading the essential value of seeking truth for the sloth of being told what the truth is. Everyone reads less and writes less than they did in the past. In fact I remember my nephews showing me how they got good marks in school simply printing out internet news back in the 1990’s. The internet had a magical hold on many and good marks for printing out articles and not writing about them seemed strange to me.
~ WE REALLY DON'T READ ANYMORE ~
Reading helps you learn & writing about what you read is still how you get a degree in college
We really don’t read anymore and that is a shame. Reading helps you to learn and writing about what you read is still how you get a degree in college. The problems we are facing today with plagiarism and the use of technology to do our reading and our writing for us is dehumanizing us. In my writings I don’t care if I misspell a word or an occasional grammatical error. At least it says I’m human and not a machine.
• The old tried and true (PHONICS) SRA reading modules from the 4th grade are long gone. In the modern era we have the ability read at our own pace and learn at our own pace even before the internet. YouTube and long form video communicates vast amounts of information for all ages and has changed completely how we learn and collaborate. We are never going back and we have to guard against the clickbait that steals our time as we plug ourselves into the internet matrix on our phones 24x7.
With the internet model we are now exposed to a vast array of subjects and specialties and that is mind blowing in and of itself. Most of us are captured by sensory overload and addicted to the internet and probably learning a lot about things that have no real value yet we spend valuable time engaged in them.
• The traditional learning of the past is but a memory and technology promises to upend everything especially the way we educate ourselves. We are all homeschooling now whether we want to or not. Choose practice over theory or you may go woke.
*Today The Paper Boy Would Be Delivering Old News*
Today the paper boy would be delivering the old news of current events so that part of the paper no longer has a value proposition.
The paper boy value proposition is still the local events calendar and the local sports news for our kids.
The paper boy value add is still public notices and obituaries. The value is still in opinion and commentary.
The paper boy value add is still a necessity in a local community focused on local news and events.
The past age of the paper boy was a human age the spirit of this age has been traded for the dehumanization of the woke ethic.
We are in a generation living out the fantasy that has put theoretical knowledge and trivial pursuits above real and practical learning.
Why do we spend so much money and time studying things that may not have any practical application or immediate meaning in real life? Meaning is lost in a “didn’t earn it” society that is not seeking truth but agreement. The purpose seems to have become conformity and compliance and that is leading us to disaster.
• We all see it. Real life traded for fantasy, temptation and distraction, at least until we run out of money. Problem is with no skills this leads to conflict and destruction when the music stops.
This can be enhanced with an electronic modality where internet interacts with print and visa versa. Printing and rolling papers less desirable and more expensive but it’s still more soothing to read a paper at the barber shop or a doctor’s office than to stare at your phone constantly.
• However we must remember that people have scrapbooked and saved newsprint for 500 years because it is tangible and sharable with or without the electronic mode. Books remain essential and papers are essential for local communities, local culture local news and local conversations.
The Paper of Record And The Culture Of
The Paper Boy Are Undervalued Community Assets
