Despite what people will emphatically tell you, I’m not completely clueless.
(I said completely.)
I know newspapers’ glory days in the United States are behind them, as long gone as Donald Trump’s first claim to modesty.
I know that the Internet and social media have made the need to read a newspaper about as great as the need to put premium unleaded in your 2005 scooter.
And while they still serve an important purpose, I know there are faster ways than a newspaper to get the information we important busy people need immediately.
But I also know a newspaper — weekly, bi-weekly, daily —has a feature that will never be duplicated or overshadowed by anything a computer, tablet or phone screen can offer.
Newspapers are tangible. Their physical form provides a comfort that can’t be had from staring at a collection of pixels on a high definition screen and clicking a mouse.
I imagine that decades from now when the mother of one of the boys who played in the 2009 Little League World Series comes across the clipped and saved articles featuring stories and photos of her boy, she will stop whatever she is doing to relive the moment when her son was her little boy.
Holding the tattered and faded paper in her hands, the aroma of ink and straw filling her nose, she will undoubtedly feel a wave of nostalgia for that precious time that slipped by. Was it that long ago?
Newspapers — old ones that we keep and lug around with us from place to place — have a way of making the milestones of our days alive again. Whether it’s a birth announcement, an obituary or other occasion, the act of touching something from years ago can be profound.
I have entire newspapers from Sept. 12, 2001. I have front pages of the day after President Bill Clinton was impeached. And sports sections from this and other countries highlighting breathtaking moments in World Cup action bring me particular joy.
Each time I touch and hear the crinkling of those increasingly delicate papers I have the feeling I am there again — wherever past time may be.
I know the same information can be found and read online, with much prettier colors and more interactive components. And I know that it is not out of the realm of possibility that newspapers as we know them will cease to exist (and I will most certainly want the final newspaper ever printed, to save and to savor.)
But I also know — or strongly suspect — that the ballplayer’s mother will derive more pleasure in passing along the archived family treasure to her son and grandchild more so than she would in forwarding a link.
When you can touch history, it makes us more real.
