The Joy of Paper

Guilty pleasures are the best. Reading a paper,  a full broadsheet, is a rare luxury. I read the news, most of the time this is consumed via web sites, Twitter or various dedicated apps. If take the train I’ll pick up a Metro, it’s a desultory reading experience. Red Tops are equally dismal. I wonder about the quality of the journalists or the editors or the combination of both. These papers are visceral in their response to any event. Analysis and reason fly out of the window and all I get is bias and sensationalism. They are the news equivalent of drinking brackish water. I really rather wish I hadn’t, wonder what diseases I’ve contracted and need something to cleanse the unpleasant residual taste.

Broadsheets though ….there is something mightily decadent in spreading almost a square yard of paper open to absorb the contents. You can’t easily read one on a rush hour train, unless you hold a black belt in origami. But, at home, on the sofa or at the kitchen table, I can hog  space. Using the vast paper acreage to, ostrich like, shut out the rest of the world and immerse my head in the tiny black and white print.

The sheer weight of paper in some of the Sunday papers is amazing, I’m pretty sure Lord of The Rings weighs in lighter. Yet, unlike the latter, which, once read, will sit on the shelf awaiting the next time, this broadsheet and all its supplemental inserts and magazines will shortly be discarded - compost, barbecue lighter or just more landfill. 

Yes, reporting is biased, that is inevitable, but they forsake the rabid fervour, overt xenophobia and outright propagandist soapboxing of the Red Tops for a more measured argument. At least some evidence of reasoning here, some detail in the reporting, an appeal to use one’s brain rather than being bounced into rash conformist judgements. Once I have reconciled myself with the  sorrow of sacrificed trees, my proxied contribution to global warming, and the final disposal problems; at least its a good read, an intellectual challenge and, coffee in hand, a very civilised way to spend a Sunday morning.