Then we are talking about the newspaper. In paper and in colour.
Every morning it lies in the hallway, sometimes hefty and thick, sometimes thinner and more unassuming. But it cannot be overlooked. The newspaper feels fresh off the press and wants to be leafed through. That’s in the nature of the newspaper. A collection of writing, researched, written, edited by many practitioners of the journalism trade, and finally slid into the printing press. Such a newspaper is a small factory of stories – assembled anew each day. New every day. Current every day. But above all, delivered punctually to the front door.
Otherwise, it’s done for.
Reading the newspaper is almost a meditative act. The eyes pick out a story from the oversized page. It gets read – sometimes with the help of a finger, so as not to slip a line. Every turned page announced, with a rustle, that the reader had learned a little more about world events or the local story. The rustle in the forest of pages delivers the stories that shape opinions and stoke hopes or fears.
And then the second-to-last page gets turned. The back page of the newspaper is the closing bouquet of the flood of news. Then it’s over. The printed and folded work of journalistic information wanders onto the pile of other outdated newspapers.
The end.
And then I look at my phone.
Yes, the printed newspaper still exists. Even though the hyperactive, naggingly nervous flashing of short bulletins on every possible channel demands something of my head. Or at least sets the contents of my brain into a hectic tension.
The leafing and rustling has been replaced by scrolling. It no longer crackles, it explodes, flashes like the market criers of earlier times.
I honestly don’t know how my head withstands this inexhaustible screaming for attention. An end is never in sight. The headlines keep outdoing each other with superlatives. I see headlines like “7 Things That…” or “The 5 Best…”, trying to steer my clicking behaviour. Or when my curiosity is meant to be hooked, up pop sentences like “You won’t believe what happens next…”, “The reason will surprise you…” and “Did you know this?”
Not to forget those emotion-grabbing buzzwords like “shocking”, “scandal”, and “disgrace”.
Clumsy are these time-pressured prompts like “Only today” or “Before it’s too late.”
The carousel of incentives for the clicking finger is endless. There is no last page and no pile onto which the collection of videos, TikTok clips, or Instagram pictures wanders. The circus is on the screen, not just in town. About the infamous algorithms, I won’t even start writing.
What I truly miss on this wild ride through the social-media jungle is the happy ending for my synapses. That redeeming feeling when the newspaper has been consumed and the last page turned down.
I have informed myself. And I have surveyed all the pages. That satisfies me and leaves me with the illusion that I’ve already done my morning’s share for the state of the world.
My view of the things of the world is accompanied by the rustle from the forest of pages.
I like that.
