Newsprint

 

From the Washington Post

   "Newsprint" is the name of a feature provided by the Washington Post. I received an email about it at the end of November and it is from that email that the graphic above was taken. Now at least I know how I spent some of my time in 2022.  

   Apparently I am both opinionated and stylish, since the opinion and style sections were the top two consulted by me. Sports took third place, which surprises me since I would have thought it would have ranked well below "Entertainment", which is often the section I click on first, because it includes the reviews and articles about "Books." 

   The folks at the Post then suggested that those readers with tastes similar to mine also enjoyed the "Tech Friend Newsletter" and they provided me with some other articles I may have missed. It was indicated to me that I am a loyal reader of the pieces produced by Timothy Bella, whose name I did not recognize, and it was suggested that I might also want to check out Kim Bellware, of whom who I was also unaware.  I gather I will receive more information about my reading habits as our relationship develops.

   A purpose of all this is, I suppose, to encourage our relationship, and the data collected will probably result in me receiving more notes from the WP indicating there are other articles I have missed that will appeal to a guy like me. Unlike the old paper on newsprint, the publishers of it now know what is being read and how long we spend on each article. Knowing such things allows the editors to see what is really popular and to point that out so that the article becomes even more popular and, on some newspaper sites, remains on the "front page" for days. The bad news is that more froth is likely to be produced and rise to the top, while well-written, heavier items related to obscure subjects will sink and eventually disappear. 

Good News From the Washington Post

   There used to be newspapers which were printed on paper and, on Sunday in the United States, were massive bundles, helpful for those who had hangovers. I had many of those while living in the Washington area in the 1960s and relied heavily on the WP. Unfortunately I once took the paper with me on a bus trip to fulfill a military obligation in Norfolk and was wearing 'whites', the bottom portion of which was blackened by the ink. 

   There even used to be thick printed sections which were essentially mini-magazines, one of which was known as "Book World", but when the advertising started to disappear, so did the book review tabloids. Long essays about books were lost, along with those who could make a living reviewing them. In 2009, the Washington Post stopped printing "Book World" because, “The advertising in Book World didn’t justify the amount of space that we dedicated each week to books coverage,” Marcus Brauchli, executive editor of The Post, said in a phone interview."

   Well, that is really bad news, but there is some good news to note since this fall it was announced that, 

"Starting this week, we begin something new and revive something beloved. I’m thrilled to say that "Book World" returns in print after a long hiatus. In 2009, the print edition closed, and books coverage appeared in separate sections, "Outlook" and "Style." We are now reuniting our books staff to produce enhanced online coverage all week and a print edition on Sundays." ("Reintroducing Book World: The Washington Post's Books Section Starts a New Chapter, in Print Every Sunday and With a Refurbished and Revitalized Presence Online," John Williams, WP, Sept. 21, 2022.)

Part of the "revitalization" consists of an email which subscribers will receive each week from Ron Charles, bearing the title - "The Washington Post Book Club." Many of the 1400+ articles I read would have been produced by him or fellow critic, Michael Dirda.

Bad News From the Washington Post

   More recently the news is again bleak, although one would think that Mr. Bezos, the owner of the WP, would have the resources to host a grand Christmas office party for the staff. If there is an office party, there will be fewer staff to attend it and the mood on the 25th will be grim since that is the last day the WP's "Sunday Magazine" will appear. For this bad news see: "The Washington Post Will End Its Sunday Magazine, Eliminate Positions," Sara Ellison, Nov. 30, 2022. 

"The Washington Post will stop publishing its stand-alone print magazine, one of the last of its kind in the country and which has been published under different names for more than six decades, the newspaper’s executive editor, Sally Buzbee, announced Wednesday.

The Sunday magazine has 10 staff members, who were told in a meeting that their positions have been eliminated, according to Shani George, The Post’s vice president for communications.

“We will end the print Sunday Magazine in its current form as we continue to undergo our global and digital transformation,” Buzbee said in a subsequent email to staff early Wednesday afternoon. She noted that “we will be shifting some of the most popular content, and adding more, in a revitalized Style section that will launch in the coming months.”

“We deeply appreciate the contributions this staff has made to our print readers over the years,” she wrote in conclusion.

The Post launched the magazine in its current form in 1986, though it had published a print Sunday magazine for the previous quarter century. The magazine is distributed with copies of the Sunday paper. Its last issue will publish on Dec. 25, Buzbee said.

  In this instance, popularity did not seem to matter since five of the forty most popular stories in the WP, are found in the magazine. Nor does the quality of the articles make a difference since the Pulitzer was won for some of them. There are now few such magazines left:

"Along with the Boston Globe and New York Times, The Post had been one of the few remaining newspapers to publish a weekly magazine. They were once popular features for major metropolitan dailies — “prime real estate for long-form newspaper features, especially as they were surrounded by gorgeous ads for expensive condos and watches,” said Bill Grueskin, a professor at Columbia Journalism School and a former editor for the Miami Herald and Wall Street Journal. “Those ads have largely disappeared from most newspapers, and so have the magazines.”

And although newspaper journalists once craved the opportunity to write at magazine length, “that’s less of a priority now, given the infinite space available online,” he said."

   About the situation at the Post there have been conflicting headlines, some positive and others negative. But, here is one of the latest ones and it is likely to best describe the mood of the employees: "Holiday Gloom at The Washington Post," Erik Wemple, Dec. 17. The "economic head winds" continue blowing across the news deserts and soon there will be few print newspapers left and likely no local ones at all. 

The Bonus: 

"The Washington Post recorded nearly 68 million unique visitors across its digital platforms in August 2022, up 7 percent month-on-month."

Reading Habits

The Washington Post
   Back in the last century, those who published newspapers didn't know if we read them, or simply used them to swat flies on hot summer days. Now we are typically being observed when we are reading them on our computers. The graphic above provides a snapshot I received from The Washington Post indicating my tally for the year.
   I received an earlier one and told you about it in a long post which also includes considerable information about The Washington Post. I had difficulty finding it, but finally did so under the heading: Newsprint. That post and this one are primarily for me since I don't keep a record of the things I do, like reading newspapers. My first post about this will be more interesting since in this one I will simply summarize some of the other points beyond the ones in the illustration. 
  I read almost the same number of stories, but 21 fewer this year. I don't know if one has to read the complete article to have it counted. This past year the pieces were authored by 537 writers, whereas the earlier email indicated I read articles by 719 different authors. Once again, the author who appeared to be my most popular one, has a name I did not recognize and it appears that the "Opinion" section was the one I visited most often. I also read a lot of articles about the "D.C. Area", which makes sense since I spent a lot of time in that area and grew up in Maryland. That I read quite a few about "Israel and Palestinian Territories" came as a complete surprise as did the observation that I looked at lots of "Sports" stories.
  The summary provided by The Washington Post was a flattering one, which probably relates more to marketing than it does to statistics. I assume that the other papers I read, know exactly what I have read, but they don't share those data with me. They apparently do, however, with various companies who do send me emails relating to things about which I have taken the briefest of peeks. 

Match Making

Factlet (13)

   This is not about what you think, it is about matches. Back when many people smoked, matches were needed and the line uttered by Lauren Bacall to Humphrey in To Have and Have Not, "Anybody got a match?," was often heard.  One of my sisters had huge glass containers and vases full of colourful matchbook covers. Now you rarely seen them and only infrequently get asked, "Buddy, got a light?"

   I thought of those match-filled days of long ago when I ran across this paragraph which provides the Factlet(s):

"For this tree [Western White Pine], almost exclusively now [c1949], yields us our wooden matches. Formerly they were made from the Eastern White Pine, but as the first growth of that species approached exhaustion, the western species, its closest relative and similar to it in the physical and chemical properties of its wood, began (from about 1914 on) to bear the whole burden of matchwood production. This may not seem a great drain - a match so slight a thing - but remember that twelve thousand wooden matches are struck, by the American people, every second. That makes more than 103 million in twenty-four hours. To produce a year's supply of matches, three hundred thousand mature pines must yield up their lives. If grown to a pure strand, they would cover an area 2 miles wide and 10 miles long."

   I suppose that one could view all of this as "progress" since fewer trees are being cut down to provide matches.  On the other hand, less trees are being used to produce newsprint and that is not good. Trees grow back, but newspapers are unlikely to return, even in digital form.

Source:

   That paragraph will be found on p.38 of A Natural History of North American Trees, by Donald Culross Peattie. It's a much more interesting book than the title indicates. See my post about Peattie. 

   If you are interested in the disappearance of the ordinary objects we grew up with see: Going Going Gone: Vanishing Americana by Susan Jones & Marilyn Nissenson. Among the things that have gone: Bank Checks; Carbon Paper; DDT; Girdles; Men's Garters; Nuns; Slide Rules; Tonsillectomies and Typewriters and Wedding Night Virgins.

All of those topics are covered in the book and I have a copy if you want to borrow it.

Post Script: 

   If you are more interested in the subject of "Match Making," see my post - "Lonely in London."
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