On day after Super Bowl, print was king again

The irony – at least for a guy who bleeds ink – was delicious.

All day last Monday I fielded emails, Tweets and Facebook requests from people all seeking the same thing. Believe it or not, it was something they could not find on their phone, or online.

One after another, they all sheepishly asked the same thing:

“Where can I get a copy of the print edition of today’s newspaper.”

There are not a lot of things that bring a smile to this dinosaur’s increasingly craggy face these days. But I’d be lying if I told you I was not smiling every time I fielded another request on electronic media.

Of course, last Monday’s print edition included a front page I have been waiting all my life to deliver. It was a pretty simple concept. One photo. One word. “PHINALLY!” Yes, that was the way I decided to convey the news that fans in Philadelphia no doubt wondered if they would ever receive: The Eagles were Super Bowl champions, beating Tom Brady, Bill Belichick and the vaunted New England Patriots, 41-33.

Here’s the idea. I’ve done a few of these before, when the Sixers won a world title in 1983, two Villanova NCAA hoops titles, and of course that majestic 2008 Phillies World Series championship.

It’s said that newspapers are the first rough draft of history. Some days are rougher than others. Yes, I make my share of mistakes in print every day. But on those special days when we are heralding a monumental news event, the print edition of the newspaper takes on a whole new meaning.

It becomes a memento, a keepsake, something that becomes part of every family’s treasured heirlooms.

That’s the thought process of how you design these very special editions of the newspaper. You tear up the formula you usually use and give the people a souvenir, something they will show future generations.

As a lifelong, die-hard Eagles fan, a longtime denizen of the 700 Level at the Vet, I have been waiting all my life to create that front page.

Apparently a lot of people felt the same way. Minutes after the Monday edition hit the streets, it was selling out. We had increased our press run, printing thousands of extra copies, and it still wasn’t enough. People started driving all over the county, running into one Wawa and news outlet after another. They found the same thing at just about every site: Empty racks. Sold out!

When they failed in their search for a copy of the paper, they started calling the newspaper. And emailing. And reaching out via Twitter and Facebook. God bless ‘em.

And not just from here in Delco. I was fielding emails from people – most of them who grew up in this area – who were now living all over the United States who had seen our front page online and wanted a copy of the print edition.

They were looking for something they could not find on Amazon or anywhere else online — something they could hold in their hands, confirming what they had just witnessed.

That tactile sense of the newspaper, the feel of it in your hands – and the ink on your shirt sleeves and fingertips – is part of the glory of what we create here every day.

Imagine that. Print. For one day, it was king again.

Hell, I even fielded a few phone calls from people who wanted to thank us that we had not jacked up the price of Monday’s newspaper, as some other local outlets did.

Not that we couldn’t use the revenue.

These are difficult times for the newspaper industry, in particular the print version of what we do. Yes, while we are busy delivering information instaneously online, Tweeting and posting on Facebook, we still lovingly create a print edition every day.

But the truth is, people simply are not reading our print edition – or just about anything in print – in the numbers they once did. That is especially true of young people. If there is one difficult lesson we have learned in this racket the past few years is that we no longer control how people get their information – or on what platform. Readers now are no longer content to simply wait for the next day’s print edition of the newspaper. We have short attention spans these days. We demand our information in tiny bites, and as fast as we can shovel it out there. That is not always a good thing. But that’s a different column.

Print, and the economic model our industry was built on, is broken. We are now furiously trying to adopt to new models, new revenue streams and new platforms.

But we still print. Or, as I always remind my daughter the environmental lawyer and crusader, “Your old man still kills trees for a living.”

The print industry continues to bleed red ink, vanishing advertising revenue, and readers who have moved on to shiny new gadgets who deliver their headlines so much quicker. The results are often not pretty. We endure more layoffs. We see editorial staffs shrink. We are unable to cover everything we once did.

And then something momentous happens. Something unexpected. Something so majestic it commands our attention, and demands a front page worthy of its heft.

The Eagles winning a Super Bowl, for instance. Yes, I have fielded phone calls from a few readers complaining about the amount of coverage we devoted last week to a bunch of grown men playing a kids’ game. Don’t kid yourselves. That is the magic of sports, sometimes it transcends everything. It is one of our few remaining shared, bonding experiences. We all watch it together. At the same time. We clap, we scream, we bite our nails in unison.

The love of a team is handed down from father to son. And daughter.

It becomes part of the fiber that weaves its way through generations.

Last Sunday night was one of those moments.

For long-suffering Eagles fans, maybe the best moment.

I will not deny that I shed a few tears.

It was a true labor of love putting together that front page last Sunday night.

I waited long enough to do it. Apparently I wasn’t the only one. Don’t believe it? Just try to find a copy of last Monday’s print edition.

Today in a lot of corners of this industry, print is considered an antique, something our parents once did. But not last Monday. People were desperate to get their hands on a copy of the newspaper, one they would throw in the closet along with all the rest of their precious keepsakes.

The Eagles were Super Bowl champions.

Phinally!