My adaptability chops were on full display as my pooch and I ventured out west for a month, returning home in the middle of April.
How is that? Well, there once was a time — when I was a full-time newspaper journalist — when I would scarf up local newspapers at every stop along the way. My wife and I would travel in our recreational vehicle; we would stop in this or that town and I would look for the newspaper, purchase it and go through it looking for ideas I could appropriate for the paper I was working for at the time.
The changing media climate, sad to say, has relegated newspapers — even the one-time award-winning local papers — to shadows of their former selves. Toby the Puppy and I stopped overnight in towns served by newspapers published in Flagstaff, Ariz., Sacramento, Calif., San Jose, Calif., Eugene, Ore., Portland, Ore., Seattle, Wash.
Did I pick up a single copy of those newspapers? Not a chance. I happen to know what has happened to many of those newspapers, as I have followed the media trends fairly carefully for the past several years. They all have been decimated. They have staffs that are a fraction of the size they used to be.
Many of them no longer publish daily editorial pages, which is where I spent the bulk of my nearly 37-year-long career.
So, with that knowledge, and more, I chose to pass on what had been a tradition in my life for seemingly forever.
The saddest part of all is something I am loath to admit … which is that I did not miss reading them. I have been away from the daily newspaper publishing grind for more than a decade.
Time has marched on. So have I.