"Paper?" he asks.I glance down blankly from the bank of TVs near the middle of the newsroom, absorbed in the headlines.
A man in a blue shirt offers a floppy copy from our first run, still damp off the press at 11:15 p.m. I accept wordlessly and flip the folded broadsheet in an attempt to inhale inconspicuously without looking like a junkie in need of an ink fix.
I love that smell, at once heavy and fresh; I love knowing tomorrow's news today. But it's also a reminder of how static print can be, how it fares in the face of the Internet's immediacy.
Barring something as major as a presidential assassination, it's unlikely that news breaking long after 11 will make it into the following day's paper. I do, after all, have what's running tomorrow right here in my hands, the night before.
And that's what online is for, right? Breaking news and updates that didn't make it into print or can't make it fast enough. Don't get me wrong. I'm a child of the Internet Age; a blogger, an HTMLer, not a Luddite.
But I do love that smell and I sure can't sniff our homepage. Or can I? *presses nose to monitor*
Photo "Newspapers on the Press" by Ron Watts courtesy Corbis
2 comments:
This reminds me of the days when I was a kid delivering newspapers. I enjoyed going down to pick them up, and always arrived early so I could watch them coming off the press, hear the rhythmic sound of the press and smell hot lead from the Linotype machines (yes, it was a long time ago!) and smell the ink and newsprint.
You would have loved it. I did, and still do.
Hey K, I didn't know you blogged! And you're doing great too!
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