The daily rag

Otherwise known as the daily newspaper – sadly seems to be a thing of the past these days. I was therefore quite surprised the other morning arriving just after 6 am at Global Morning News studio to see a rolled-up copy of the Calgary Herald lying on the front door mat. I couldn’t step over it. I carefully picked it up and took it inside and gave it to the security person. Wow. It has been ages since I have seen or read a newspaper – let alone see it curled up on the mat waiting to make someone’s morning.

Does anybody still do that? In all the British dramas you see the couple at the breakfast table under the bow window each reading the newspaper. Now what do we do? Hunch over our phones to read the latest news not really knowing whether the source is reliable or not. There was always something good in the newspaper like the jokes page or the crossword. And if you were going to boast about being good at the crossword make sure you are talking about the one in the Times of London. They always had some really difficult clues.

Also newspapers in those days were HUGE …. you had to have arms like a gymnast to spread open that baby so it would be a whole process of opening to the page you wanted and then folding and folding until you had a reasonable size that you could manage, in between your tea and toast. Or maybe like this guy – invent a totally over the top machine to turn the page of the newspaper.

It makes me feel kind of sad to think that newspapers, the printed kind, have sort of disappeared. It doesn’t seem that long ago that you could go to Starbucks and read the paper with your coffee. Each Saturday there was the travel section and who can forget those “personal” ads. As Wiki puts it “A personal advertisement, sometimes called a contact ad, is a form of classified advertising in which a person seeks to find another person for friendship, romance, marriage, or sexual activity. In British English, it is commonly known as an advert in a lonely hearts column.”

I remember in England what we called “the rude newspaper” namely the News of the World. It reported on all the scandals, usually with less than reliable information, and eventually was forced to close down. It always reported the scandals – as can be seen from this clip.

It also used to post very racy girlie photos on the inside front cover. These photos and the gossipy nature of the articles meant that the newspaper became known as the News of the Screws.

When I worked at one of the financial newspapers in Johannesburg, South Africa, I remember how much work went into editing and checking the articles – but still some managed to get published when they shouldn’t have. And pity the poor person who should have checked the headlines –

I could go on but I won’t. Last photo going back to 1980 when a headline in the Calgary Herald was wrong – so it was “corrected”.

😦