I actually kvetched about that this morning and the GG cracked up. But it’s true, I do use newspaper for packing material. After I’m finished reading it.

It was a beautiful morning. The last of this week’s crop of thunderstorms began to roll through at about 5:00 AM. I gave myself a pass today and stayed in bed just a wee bit longer than usual. When I went out for my walk, I noticed that there was NO NEWSPAPER! This was not a good thing. Yesterday, I packed a box of stuff to go to San Francisco. There are some breakables in it and those are carefully wrapped in self-stick bubble-wrap (not sure if I like the self-stick or not…) but I needed some crumpled-up newspaper below, above, and between to keep stuff from shifting around. Guess what? Trash pickup was on Friday and, wouldn’t you know, good old Garbage Woman had put all of the newspapers out in the recycle bin. Since the old Ann Arbor Snooze has turned into AnnArbor.com, we only get a paper newspaper twice a week, Thursday and Sunday. So I was anxiously awaiting the Sunday Snooze so I could finish packing my box and take it over to the post office uscan and mail it.

I have very mixed feelings about not getting a daily snoozepaper anymore. I miss getting it but I have to admit that I would usually just kind of scan it and throw it in the recycle. Recycle or not, I’m not sure that’s saving trees. But I can’t seem to get into the habit of going on-line for news. Yes, I could subscribe to an RSS feed or something but I tend to get overwhelmed by those. I think I lasted about a week before ditching LOL Cats. Our little snoozepaper wasn’t all that great but it did have some local news in it and there were always the obituaries and things like that. I definitely don’t go online every day to see who died. I don’t want to seek that information out. Heck, for years, every time The Commander called, I would answer, “who died?” I don’t do that any more. She is on the cusp of outliving everybody. But I did scan the newspaper obits for any names that stood out.

I also have mixed feelings about the new snoozepaper and on-line news. I don’t want to be too critical because I think we are living in the vortex of a paradigm shift (and no, I have no idea what I just said there 😉 ) when it comes to publishing anything. Think Gutenberg Press at light-speed, maybe? I am not a journalist. I am just a person who has always read newspapers and wonders what’s next. I am not entranced with the snoozepaper website’s information architecture but that’s a problem a lot of websites have and it isn’t an easy one to solve. What I am more concerned about is the readability of the articles in both media. I read an article in today’s snoozepaper and I couldn’t figure out what they were talking about until about the fifth paragraph. What was it back in grade school? Who What Where When Why? Shouldn’t the facts be at the top of the story? Where are the editors?

On the other hand, the folks at the new web-based snoozepaper are at the beginning of, uh, whatever is next. Apparently, they have a space downtown where people can come in and, I dunno, use computers and/or waarrrless, and buy coffee (?) and maybe get to meet the folks who, well, publish the on-line and paper Snooze. And they could maybe help older folks who don’t like to get their news online. Are they really doing that? It sounds really cool but I am shy (or something) and I admit I have yet to check it out. I love the idea but I wonder how many older folks can still navigate to downtown A-squared well enough to be able to get to that place and get help. Especially now that they have destroyed the nearby library parking lot.

Sigh.

P.S. Yes, you’ve figured out that the snoozepaper finally got delivered and I was able to pack the box for SF properly — the “TV Week” section made perfect packing material — and send it off.

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