{"id":39040,"date":"2019-09-29T13:37:51","date_gmt":"2019-09-29T13:37:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=39040"},"modified":"2019-09-29T13:37:51","modified_gmt":"2019-09-29T13:37:51","slug":"retirement-journey-takes-me-farther-than-i-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=39040","title":{"rendered":"Retirement journey takes me farther than I thought"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I want to acknowledge something I realized during a recent foray across the western portion of North America.<\/p>\n

It is that my retirement from a craft I pursued with great joy has taken me farther away from it than I could have imagined.<\/p>\n

I worked in print journalism for nearly 37 years. My career ended in August 2012. I dabbled a bit here and there part time writing for other media outlets: public TV, commercial TV and editing a weekly newspaper. I kept my head in the game and my hand on the mechanics of the craft.<\/p>\n

Then I entered full retirement mode.<\/p>\n

In the old days, travels with my wife usually meant picking up newspapers in every community we would visit or pass through. I would bring home an armload of newspapers from which I might glean ideas about layout, or presentation.<\/p>\n

This time, after spending more than a month on the road through the western United States and Canada? Nothin’. I didn’t bring home a single newspaper. Indeed, I read only one newspaper during our time on the road \u2026 and it was a freebie distributed to all the visitors of a Eugene, Ore., RV park. The newspaper was the Register-Guard of Eugene, which in the old days was considered one of the better newspapers in the Pacific Northwest. It was family owned and was considered a leader in graphic design and presentation of news and commentary.<\/p>\n

The Baker family sold the R-G not long ago to GateHouse Media, the outfit that has purchased dozens of newspapers around the country, becoming a media titan in an age of dwindling newspaper influence and importance.<\/p>\n

My wife and I spent several nights up the highway from Eugene in Portland, my hometown and where I first fell in love with newspapers. I never laid eyes on The Oregonian newspaper during our visit there.<\/p>\n

Oh, the end of an era for me personally!<\/p>\n

We visited many cities that used to boast solid newspaper tradition: Colorado Springs; Bend, Ore.; Wenatchee, Wash.; Calgary, Alberta; Winnipeg, Manitoba; Grand Forks, N.D.; Topeka, Kan.; Tulsa, Okla.<\/p>\n

I didn’t read a single word printed in newspapers distributed in those communities.<\/p>\n

What does this mean? Hmm. I’ll have to ponder it. I still cherish my memories of toiling at newspapers in Oregon and Texas. I continue to harbor many fond memories of those years. I recall them with glee. However, I no longer am wedded to newspapers as my primary information source \u2026 or so it has become obvious, given what I have just reported about our recent journey.<\/p>\n

Gosh, am I now dependent on “The Internet” for all my information? To some extent, yes. Although I want to rely solely on “legitimate news sources” that are spread throughout cyberspace.<\/p>\n

There remains a glimmer of hope that I haven’t gone totally to the dark side. I do subscribe to the Dallas Morning News. I restarted my subscription upon our return home. It arrived this Sunday morning. I will consume its contents with great gusto.<\/p>\n\n

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I want to acknowledge something I realized during a recent foray across the western portion of North America. It is that my retirement from a craft I pursued with great joy has taken me farther away from it than I could have imagined. I worked in print journalism for nearly 37 years. My career ended … Continue reading Retirement journey takes me farther than I thought<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1243,2293,2978,3297,4775,8955],"class_list":["post-39040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-news","tag-dallas-morning-news","tag-internet","tag-media","tag-newspapers","tag-the-oregonian","tag-the-register-guard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39040"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39042,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39040\/revisions\/39042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}