{"id":917,"date":"2008-12-12T07:51:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-12T12:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicholsclan.com\/tinblog\/2008\/12\/whats-black-white-and-smells-like-toast.html"},"modified":"2008-12-12T07:51:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-12T12:51:00","slug":"whats-black-white-and-smells-like-toast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/2008\/12\/whats-black-white-and-smells-like-toast.html","title":{"rendered":"What&#8217;s Black &amp; White and Smells Like Toast?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m certainly not the first to be concerned about the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baltimoresun.com\/business\/bal-bz.tribune11dec11,0,3266475.story\">demise of the venerable newspaper<\/a>.  Most are struggling financially, and with the advent of the Internet, they are increasingly non-essential.  Yet, there&#8217;s something just right about sitting down in the morning and slowly pouring through a newspaper along with a cup of coffee.  It&#8217;s an opportunity to sync up with the world in a relaxing venue, to feel connected and informed.   However, the hectic pace of weekdays makes this relaxing start all but impossible.  Still, I look forward to it on the weekends.  But if I&#8217;m honest, the experience has become more ritual than useful.<\/p>\n<p>I subscribe to over 20 RSS feeds that pump an average of 350 articles a day at me by PC or cell phone.  I listen to a couple of podcasts daily, and frequently have one of the 24 hour cable news channels or a news radio station droning in the background.  By the time the newspaper arrives in the morning, it contains almost nothing I haven&#8217;t already heard or read.  To make matters worse, the actual news and editorial content of the paper continues to shrink, meaning it&#8217;s mostly just ads now, and I ignore\/recycle them without a second look.<\/p>\n<p>I keep seriously considering canceling my subscription, but  I just can&#8217;t bring myself to do it.  Yes, it&#8217;s mostly wasted money.  Yes, the carbon footprint of making, printing, distributing, and recycling the paper is obscene.  No, it doesn&#8217;t provide any unique information.  Still, somehow it seems that unless I subscribe to and read the paper, I can&#8217;t really claim to be informed.  And I also don&#8217;t want to be part of the reason the paper goes under.  Yet I think that&#8217;s inevitable.<\/p>\n<p>In my defense, I recognize the lunacy of my position.  Although I&#8217;ve never really bought into the notion that as long as you&#8217;re worried about being nuts, you&#8217;re still sane.  On the other hand, as I&#8217;m rapidly approaching 50 years old, my &#8220;wild hares&#8221; are subscribing to the newspaper and buying an occasional lottery ticket.<\/p>\n<p>Somebody stop me&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\">\n<h6><span style=\"font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;\">Brought to you by Tim&#8230;<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/\">-Read the whole blog here-<\/a><\/span><\/h6>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m certainly not the first to be concerned about the demise of the venerable newspaper. Most are struggling financially, and<\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\"><a href=\"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/2008\/12\/whats-black-white-and-smells-like-toast.html\" title=\"Read What&#8217;s Black &amp; White and Smells Like Toast?\">Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}