They've been dropping like flies ever since I picked up the paper. I used to deliver the Newport Daily News down Carroll Ave and I would usually stop to sit down and actually read the thing when I got to the mansion on Jeffrey Road behind my house. It was a wonderful place and I had two customers in the building. The gay couple on the ground floor that ran an art/photography business out of their apartment and the Navy LCDR with the very nice German Shepherd on the second floor. There was a seat in the hall at the top of the stairs made for newspaper boys to read the rag.
I first noticed their loss when Mike Royko died and then Herb Caen popped off but it only started to hurt when Michael Kelly died in Iraq in a rollover accident as he did the marchup to Baghdad. I'll still read Henninger and Taranto but that's about it. I sure hope nothing happens to them.
Good newsmen are getting scarce. I still haven't found a good newshen but there is time and nothing passes time like reading. I subscribe to the Wall Street Journal but I mostly read it online which leaves unread newspapers lying around until they are picked up for the puzzles.
6 comments:
Alas the Daily News has sunk to lows unimaginable. We still subscribe because my wife wants "Local" news. I call it "Yesterday's left wing news tomorrow". I take the WSJ for actual news too. Worth it.
Somewhere along the line the business side got confused with the news side.
Money won.
Ah, Mike Royko. He was a favorite of mine.
My family never understood how much a slacker I was as a 12 year old with a newspaper route. I made $40/week off that route which left me with roughly $37/week more than I could use. I drove them wild by charging customers for 30 days/month instead of factoring in the 31 day months. They thought every penny needed to be extracted and didn't have any appreciation for just getting out and about on a bike and visiting the mansions along the way where excruciatingly could ride up to a place, have the butler greet me, ask me to step in and wait while he or the excruciatingly precise chauffeur got my money.
They always caved to the politicians that favorerd them and then they caved to all the special interests. They lost all relavance.
I kept his article on Skid Row on my refrigerator for years. How they just tore down the places where the down and out lived and then wondered at the outpouring of down and out people all over the city. It was a masterpiece.
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