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A clickbait-style headline caught my eye on Instagram, shared by the home design website Apartment Therapy: I Ditched My Old Sunday Routine of Doomscrolling for this Analog Ritual Instead & It’s Changed My Life.
“I wasn’t informed, I was inundated,” the excerpt reads. “There had to be a better way! Then I remembered how my mom used to get the news when I was a child.”
Any guesses as to what this “analog ritual” is? That’s right, it’s the newspaper.
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I also came across this absolutely unhinged BuzzFeed headline from 2023: This Student Went Absolutely Viral On TikTok For Reading The News, And I Am Literally So Obsessed I Actually Bought A Newspaper Subscription BTW, newspaper subscriptions are pretty inexpensive — I have one and I love it!
You know what? If rebranding the newspaper as an “analog ritual” or a viral TikTok moment is what it takes to get the “juves” to not think reading the paper is for “chopped uncs” or whatever, so be it. This is a good thing.
But I also have to say that this periodic Columbussing of the newspaper makes me feel mildly salty as someone who has worked in print media since 2006. Like, oh, we’re all pretending we love and support newspapers now? Those pillars of democracy we allowed to die because everything should be for free?
I felt this very keenly in 2019, back when BuzzFeed News — the journalism counterpart to the quizzes and listicles of BuzzFeed proper — printed, for one day only, a physical newspaper that was distributed for free around New York City. I bristled as Twitter was awash with comments about how cool this was, and if only there was something like this every day, etc.
We had these! They were called alt weeklies! And they died because no one supported them!
The Free Press has been publishing since 1872. (Mikaela MacKenzie / Free Press files)
I’ve heard this in casual conversation, too. “If only I could get a curated selection of news that wasn’t a feed…” “If only there was a place that could tell me what was going on in the city because I feel like I miss out stuff…”
Ahhhhhhhh! Yes. Hi. Hello. We’ve literally been doing this since 1872!
I know I am preaching to the converted here. Most of the folks who get this newsletter are also subscribers — many of you for decades. You already know the value.
So it’s encouraging, then, that young people are seeing the value, too.
“A newspaper is curated by humans, not an algorithm,” writes Pia Ceres, the author of the Apartment Weekly piece. “Every week, I read beyond what a narrowly tailored For You page would have served me, like a science story about trees, the efforts of a local workers’ union, and new Oaxacan restaurants in town.”
She also points out that reading the newspaper feels “unbelievably chic.” Agree.
Will it be Gen Z influencers who save print media? Will we be able to seize upon this analogue moment? That remains to be seen. But however younger generations are finding their way to picking up the newspaper — to making it a ritual — is a positive. Our survival literally depends on it.
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