Newspapers
Like many kids, my first reading habits were the comics. My dad would bring
home the Sunday papers early on Saturday night: the Philadelphia Inquirer, the
Philadelphia Bulletin, and the Camden Courier Post. Some nights he also brought
Bon Bons. I would lie on my tummy, eating Bon Bons, watching TV, and reading
the comics spread out in front of me on the floor. Sunday comics were special
because they were in color. They also had eight to ten panels instead of the
weekday three or four. I loved following Blondie and Dennis the Menace.
The Camden Courier Post was our local daily. I would pick up a copy at a local
gift store for a nickel, until one day when the rising cost of living hit home
and the price was raised to eight cents. For awhile, I fell in love with the
tabloid the Philadelphia Daily News. I loved the way it was shaped like a magazine,
making it easier to hold and read. Yes, it was inferior in quality to the Inquirer
and even the Courier Post, but I was just a kid, so I was influenced more by
the coolness factor.
When my family moved across country my newspaper world shifted, as well. San
Diego has never been a great newspaper city. The only two dailies there, the
Union and Evening Tribune, were both owned by the conservative James Copley.
The Evening Tribune is now history. In the Seventies the public learned what
anti-war activists already knew, that the Copley Press printed everything the
CIA fed them without question. My housemate Bob, a former San Diegan, told me
that on the day of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Tribune's headline was "Cuba
Revolts." The only readable paper was the Los Angeles Times, which in the
late Seventies printed a San Diego edition.
As a teenager in the Sixties, the underground press had a strong influence on
me. My brother brought the LA Free Press and Berkeley Barb into our San Diego
home. In the Barb, I discovered Dr. Hip, Eugene Schoenfeld, who provided common
sense advice on sex and drugs. In the Free Press, I read Harlan Ellison's review
of television called the Glass Teat. The author observed that small children
lying in front of the TV looked like piglets sucking from their mother pig's
teats. The CRT picture tube is appropriately shaped like a teat. San Diego soon
had its own underground paper called the Free Door. Cameron Crowe started his
journalism career at the Door which he fictionalized in his very good, but overlooked
movie, Almost Famous. It was through Bob that I met Tony Maguire, of the Door.
Tony, now deceased, was a dyslexic activist and Macintosh evangelist. He told
me he suspected Crowe had used his last name for one his fictional characters,
Jerry Maguire.
Bob introduced me to Paul Krassner's Realist. Shortly after we arrived in Berkeley,
we caught Krassner's standup act at the Julia Morgan Theater. He is one of the
funniest comedians I have ever heard. While working at the Barb, Bob got to
know Stewart Albert, another cofounder of the Yippies. That is one of Bob's
friends I wished I had met, but unfortunately, Albert died a few years ago.
Moving to the Bay Area, I was suddenly awash in printed media. We had the Chronicle,
which Bob called the "daily comic book for adults." Through a Joint
Operating Agreement, the Chronicle published in the morning and the Hearst owned
Examiner came out in the afternoon. The two companies collaborated on the Sunday
edition. In the early Eighties, the afternoon Oakland Tribune, owned by Gannett,
printed a morning paper called Eastbay Today. It was the prototype for Gannett's
national paper, USA Today. It was a cheap read, only ten cents, and I picked
one up from a kid selling the papers at the BART station every morning.
There used to be five to seven daily papers coming into our house every day,
including national editions of the Los Angeles and New York Times. Now, most
of my news comes through electronic means, especially the Internet. I am not
against paying for the news. In fact I pay a lot in cable TV and Internet service.
I would be happy to buy newspapers online if those other costs would come down.