End of an era?

If they happen to be looking out their windows at 6.45 am, the people in the flats opposite our house must chortle. A little drama is enacted every morning, when, regular as clockwork, either my husband or I go out the front in our dressing gowns looking for the paper.

If it’s there, all is well, we disappear back inside and aren’t seen till we scurry out the door to work 45 minutes later, booted and spurred and ready for another day. If not, the second partner appears, looking in all the tricky places that papers rolled in gladwrap hide – under the car, deep in the overgrown creepers, buried in the native grasses, behind the recycling bin. If there’s still no luck, one or other of us appears at regular intervals, still hoping forlornly that it will arrive in time for at least a quick peruse before we have to leave for work. If it fails to come, our sorties out the front look increasingly desperate, and inside the house, grumpiness levels rise as we face a morning without at least a cursory glance at The Age.

Generally, the paper delivery happens about a quarter to seven, which is when I am coming down from the kitchen with our mugs of tea. From our bed, we see the headlights of the maroon sedan as it turns the corner, slows down at our driveway and then there’s the gratifying thump as the paper lands on the concrete floor of our front verandah. Sometimes I’m out there when the man arrives and I wave cheerily, wondering, as I do whenever I see rubbish trucks, if these people get sick of everyone else being in their pyjamas when they’ve been up working for hours. 

Then there’s the amicable negotiation about who gets the front bit of the paper and for how long. Which depends partly on what day of the week it is, because Tuesday, Thursday and Friday there are Epicure, the Green Pages and EG to bury my nose in, but Monday and Wednesday there are slim pickings for anyone not interested in sport. 

In the years when the kids were little and all used to pile into our bed of a morning, they knew their dad wasn’t at his most emotionally accessible at paper reading time. On the other hand, as one of them said once, ‘If Dad’s reading the paper, you can ask him for anything and he’ll say yes’.

Everywhere, all over Melbourne, all over the world, variations on this little tradition are played out. Talking to my contemporaries these past few weeks, most have memories of their own parents being absorbed in the paper of a morning. Of papers being read at the breakfast table, in the days when breakfast was a more formal meal, of crosswords being discussed and done, of that rustle and snap as a broadsheet is shaken out and looked at.

Will our grandchildren have these memories? I know there are far more important and sinister things to worry about, media-wise at the moment. Like whether there will be the money to pay serious journalists to carry out their important craft. And whether an insanely rich mining magnate who is estranged from three-quarters of her children will own so many Fairfax shares that she can start influencing editorial policy.

But the possible demise of the tradition of the morning paper is the end of an era for lots of people. Will we all sit up in bed/at the breakfast table/on the verandah/on the sofa with our i-pads trawling through the Age app?

I’ll be grieving if it comes to that, and I suppose one day, probably sooner rather than later, it will. I love opening out the paper and seeing the broad sweep of two big pages of stories, all at one. Being able to flick through, homing in on what I’m most interested in. To scribble on the word puzzle pages. I have tried to read The Age online and I hate it. I can’t find anything; I can’t get an overall feel for what has happened in the past 24 hours.

Doubtless I could get used to it. I’ve become accustomed to worse things. And it would be good for the trees. Meanwhile, in what may turn out to be the dying days of hard copy papers and morning deliveries, our Age has been arriving strangely late, or not at all. It’s as though they are breaking us in gradually, getting us used to the emptiness of paperless early mornings.

Comments

[Jane Zag]

I don't think we will ever recover from the loss of our favourite broadsheet. I have been persuaded to convert to the iPad so that we don't have to throw out so much newspaper, some of it not even opened if life is too busy. I am still in mourning though and love staying in a hotel where we get a daily paper or better still, going on holidays and buying one. The puzzles are not the same online I agree.
But who knows-i suppose we will adjust-here I am,after all, reading a blog. Jane

[Pam]

Lovely stuff Clare. Our daily delivery of the Sydney Morning Herald is an important start to the day. And there's no tussle over who gets which section. My husband checks out the business & sport, while I pore over the front page and opinion page. There was a time when I was a regular contributor to the Letters page and I have kept all my contributions (pure vanity!). Maybe it would be a good idea to get back to that as I quite like writing.
I do care about the trees. But my SMH means heaps too. Hoping the broadsheet lives on!