NEW YORK TIMES PRINT EDITION, THAT IS. A RECIPE FOR THE GOOD (LONG) LIFE

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

(A Medium publication I regularly write for — with the ungainly if apt name of “Crow’s Feet” — issued a writing-prompt challenge about doing things the old-fashioned way and my brain was starting this piece before I even turned the digital page. Enjoy.)

Impeccable digestive system. We’ll get this issue out of the way first.

Coffee, toast and the New York Times to start the day = longevity and the bloom of health. I’m staring at 93 next June, feeling just fine, thank you, and — more to the point here — thanks, NYT print edition. 

Before I entered upon what would be a joyful, 26-year late-life marriage there was one delicate issue to be settled. We both required the print edition (in 1992 you weren’t yet a weirdo if you read newspapers) of the New York Times with our morning coffee. As if an augury of that future bliss: he needed the sports section first; I begin with page one and go straight through every section as it comes. Deal.

You cannot digest breakfast while scrolling; it is against the natural order of the universe. (News on TV? God help you.)

There’s more to my read-the-news-the-old-fashioned-way fixation than maintenance of my digestive system, however. Or perhaps the two are related. It’s the angst factor. Watch the faces of two people getting today’s news. The one scrolling through will react with widening eyes and clenched teeth. It’s the way the body handles impending disaster. But the newsprint reader? She gets the disaster one slowly and carefully printed word at a time, just the way God intended. Emotionally digestible.

OK, it’s yesterday’s news by the time it gets to your doorstep. That’s the whole point. You’ve already heard the headlines blaring from everywhere in the world including all of your state-of-the-art devices. You’ve survived the headlines, now you sit down and read what actually happened.

Not to be blunt about it, furthermore, we print subscribers are quietly subsidizing your scrollings. We don’t mind, really. We try not to talk to you about it when your nose is glued to your screen all day. 

My obsession may have a tiny bit to do with having had a lifelong career as a freelance writer that spanned decades of working for old-fashioned newspapers. The newspaper world was, in the olden days, one of equal parts grit and glamour. It was also never-ending fun with dashes of enlightenment, watching the business of courthouses and penthouses, trying to communicate the truth of it all.

This ingrained obsession crept up on me slowly. When I was first beginning to read my sister Mimi and I would grab the morning paper and spread the comics on the floor before breakfast. My father, an educator to the bone, soon discovered a tool. “Girls,” he remarked, “if you’re going to read like that, at least start with the front page; then you can skip to the comics.” We actually cheated a lot, doing the comics first; but knowing we’d get a headline question with our orange juice we also spread the front page on the floor.

All these decades later, there may be a symbolism and a further lesson here: Perhaps we should all start the day reading the news on our knees.

Whatever. The like-clockwork digestive system, the mild-mannered demeanor, the frugality in every area of life except print media subscriptions — I credit it all to the foundational daily print newspaper.

Here’s to your health, New York Times print edition. May you live long and prosper. 

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This essay also appears on my Substack, The Optimistic Eye (@franjohns,) where I post, once a week, something positive on the political front. It’s almost always possible to find something, I promise. Feel free to visit any time; subscriptions are free.