Brekkie fine print
Say what you will about Oamaru but there are a lot of good properties for sale at prices that would make Aucklanders weep over their smashed avocado on ciabatta. I know this because when I was killing time in a local cafe´ last week, enjoying scrambled eggs on Tip Top thick sliced bread, I took the time to read the Oamaru Mail.
It only comes out on a Friday and by the time the edition reached me it had a few coffee stains – and what I hope were previous patrons’ breakfast residue – but I read it all the same. I learnt the Presbyterian priest was off to Hastings and there is a local rugby prodigy. Her name is Cheyenne.
I like newspapers. The actual printed paper with classifieds in the back and the world news tucked in between the sports and business sections. Open a newspaper and your eyes can flit to a number of headlines all competing for your attention. Squint into your phone and the order of stories is preselected by a 19-year-old journalism major who wouldn’t know how to work a rotary phone.
A paper gives a glimpse into the world that produced it.
I rarely agree with economist Shamubeel Eaqub. His world view is very different from mine and I think he’s a quaint leftie. However, he writes well and when I pick up a newspaper there he is. Despite myself I end up reading his column and sometimes, very rarely, agreeing with him.
This is the value of the physical paper. I’d rarely see his stuff online or, to use that irritating modern term, on my ‘‘timeline’’. Reading the paper brings stories, events and ideas to your attention that a prefiltered digital format may hide.
I like the classifieds, the bankruptcy notices and the personal ads. I like the random collections of tradies grasping for attention and the splashy realestate folk and their perfect teeth. A paper gives a glimpse into the world that produced it. It is a final, created, thing.
The Truth, for younger readers, wasn’t always the tawdry scandal rag that it descended into as it chased the vanishing advertising dollar. It was a national paper with a conservative editorial policy and a fearsome approach to journalism. Sadly, its long decline has an even sadder end, on the mezzanine floor of my insolvency firm. Editions from the 1930s sit beside the buxom girls who filled out the paper’s final days.
On quiet afternoons I enjoy glimpsing into the world that created those papers, reading the advertisements for Kidney Pills, stories on Japanese aggression and helpful articles on Making Good Wives Better.
Websites and news apps are ethereal things of no permanence that feed our pre-existing world view. Newspapers can open our eyes to, well, news.