Odd?

That was odd. I woke up at 5 this morning. And I have no idea as to why that happened, although there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s simply odd.

I hope that the newspaper makes an early arrival…but I doubt it will happen. It has been arriving later and later each day for the past week or two. I would complain if I didn’t have to phone someone to do it. Hello? It’s the 21st century; why would I need to phone someone? Eventually I will have to decide if I even want the newspaper.

The newspaper? It’s a McClatchy newspaper, the Sacramento Bee. And McClatchy just became the second largest publisher in the US when it bought the Knight-Ridder publishing empire over the weekend. The McClatchy plan is to sell off most of the bits and pieces, keeping just a few prime newspapers.

It wouldn’t be such a terrible thing to lose the newspapers. Historically, newspapers are fairly recent innovations. They didn’t become popular until the level of illiteracy dropped below 50%. (Duh!) In colonial times, newspapers were only read (and printed) by the intelligentsia. Reporters didn’t exist in those days and newspapers weren’t held to any standard of truth. The publisher/editor was paying to print his views. Truth didn’t enter into it.

And we are entering a new age of literacy; one that we still have to define. People still read, but at a minimum level. Libraries are closing and not receiving a lot of support when they are able to remain open. More and more parents aren’t particularly disturbed when told that their children don’t read well. People want their news in brief, not in depth. And they want it now.

I wonder if this need for “news in bites” is related to the fact that we have access to so much more news than we ever had before? Does the news overwhelm us?