Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

Wow, saw this think-piece from Garrison Keillor about how to read a newspaper. But before Keillor warms up to his topic, he feels the need to write a few pathetic paragraphs about how kids today are “missing something in their lives” and so they fill these gaps with all their new-fangled gadgets like iPods and laptops. Keillor’s answer to the millennial woes of today’s digital natives? The newspaper! Keillor’s defense of newsprint goes beyond stodgy (I mean, for a guy whose claim to fame is a radio show, I can see how he would be hostile to something like digital reading, but this truly borders on the ridiculous). In the end, I’d sooner take fashion advice from Andy Rooney than I would lifestyle choices from the man who wrote Lake Wobegon Days.

From the essay: “A man at a laptop is a man at a desk, a stiff, a drone. Where is the nobility here? He hunches forward, his eyes glaze, and beads of saliva glitter in the corners of his mouth and make their way down his chin as he becomes engrossed in the video of the fisherman falling out of the boat. A newspaper reader, by comparison, is a swordsman, a wrangler, a private eye. Holding a newspaper frees you up to express yourself, sort of like holding a sax did for Coltrane.”

Salon: Seven rules for reading the newspaper