Newspapers should not be tossed aside

olumn in The Herald-Dispatch about the importance of newspapers for today's society, but how, unfortunately, they are dying. I've heard people discuss how newspapers were going to cease to exist for years and in some form of denial I told myself it wouldn't happen in my lifetime. While checking Twitter on Wednesday, a friend of mine made a joke about growing old and having her magazine subscriptions to keep her company and then as an afterthought mentioned by the time she became a senior citizen print journalism would no longer exist. Maybe, it was the reiteration of the fact that print journalism is ceasing to exist that caught my attention, but I became extremely unsettled at this fact.

Of course it bothers me that print journalism has the possibility of becoming extinct because I am a journalist. I love having the opportunity to interview, investigate and prepare a story. News will never cease to be needed in society, but holding a paper and seeing my name in print gives me a senseof accomplishment that is unique. Newspapers provide the public with the hard-breaking news that happens in our communities, states and country. Not to say that other news outlets are not important, they are, but to be completely well-rounded, I believe the consumption of news should come in an array of forms. Newspapers have been pushed to the side for new technology such as smart phones, iPads, tablets, online news and even social media. Many of my peers get their information about hard new events from Twitter or friends' posts on Facebook. Trust me, I take part in social media just as much as the next person and my iPhone dies about once a day from being used too often, but these luxuries cannot replace the hard unbiased news that newspapers bring. Just as much I use my iPhone, nothing can replace actually holding a paper in my hands. The column that I mentioned earlier I cut out of the newspaper. How am I supposed to cut out an article, underline, highlight and save tidbits from an online source?

Apart from the reasons as a journalist this unsettles me, it worries me what this implies about our society. In the column I had read previously something the author had said really stuck with me: "Re-acculturate readers to take the print edition of the newspaper and get us all back in the habit of reading the morning paper over coffee or taking it to work to read on a break." Morning coffee? A break at work? Far too often my morning coffee is me grabbing the cup seconds before I walk out the door or a stop at Starbucks on the way to my destination. A break at work is usually spent studying for the next test or finishing up homework. If I can't even find time for these things, how am I supposed to tell people to sit down and read an entire paper. Unfortunately, I feel like today's society is just too busy and the small things might be slipping through the cracks. Getting up an extra hour to have a friend over for coffee and breakfast is something that I not only value but is also detrimental to the cultivation of my relationships. I won't give that up and try hard to remember its importance when life just seems too busy. Newspapers, to me, are a lot like that coffee with a friend. It's feeding me information about the world around me to cultivate my mind and how I relate to my community.

Joanie Borders can be contacted at borders9@marshall.edu.