This is written in haste. From all sides comes word that newspapers will be pushed into oblivion by online information systems. Before it's too late, I hope that these well-chosen words may be reproduced in real printer's ink, on real newsprint.
Not long ago I read that Frank Daniels III, publisher of The Raleigh News and Observer's Nand O. Net, has said, "in 15 or 20 years, printed newspaper will disappear."Newspapers left outside my door disappeared when I lived in an apartment building in Washington, "The City of Steal." But all newspapers disappear? Completely?
That is off-putting, as the Brits say. Without newspapers, how will we housebreak our dogs? What will we put in the bottom of bird cages? What will my news carrier throw into a different, distant bush or puddle every morning?
Years ago, friendly critics of The New Orleans Item, a lively but impoverished paper now long dead, liked to say, "If I could wrap fish in radio, I'd never buy The Item."
Could that japery become prophetic?
I think sadly of the thousands of Parisians hurrying home this evening with a three-foot-long loaf of French bread wrapped in a late edition of Paris Soir or Figaro. What will they use when newspapers vanish in the mists of the brave new cyber world?
What's going to happen to the millions of trees no longer needed for newsprint? Will we be up to our shoulders in forests?
What a tradition to go down the drain of progress! Did you know that newspapers date to the "Acta Diurna" (Daily Events) of ancient Rome? I happen to know this because I believe my favorite managing editor worked on that sheet.
I have doubts about the doom theory. Newspapers are eminently cheap, accessible and portable, unless you include the Sunday editions, which are so larded with ads that they could rupture anyone carrying them unassisted.
I remember predictions that television would replace newspapers. For several years, some nervous publishers refused to print television schedules in their newspapers.
When will the total population go online? Will everyone need to sign up?
Speaking of obsolescence, Bill Gates, Microsoft maven with the goofy haircut, predicts that pocket-sized computers will replace money "as we know it."
We? Gates has a net worth of about $15 billion. I don't "know" money nearly as well as he does.
(Edison Allen is a former journalist, former vice president at two universities and a former business executive in New York and Pittsburgh. His retirement base is Atlanta.)