Since I first learned to read, I have loved newspapers. When my infant hands first became capable of forming letters that looked a bit like typescript, I eagerly produced for the delectation of my closest relatives a single sheet of something I called “The Bowman News.” It was modeled on our small-town daily paper at which my great-aunt worked as an editor, proofreader, and occasional reporter. She would sometimes take me to see the presses and the linotype machines and the “hot metal” being cast, one slug of which was produced with my name on it in eighteen-point headline caps, which I then used with a stamp pad in order to see my own name in print for the first time. What a thrill I thought it to join, even in such a small way, the company of those I thought of as the journalistic immortals—now, alas, long forgotten, even by me.

In all the years since that time, I have never been without at least two newspapers delivered to my house every day, and during the years of my adulthood the number has more usually been four or five. Since the translation of print into online versions, I have continued to “take in” (as people once said) a couple of printed papers for old times’ sake, even though I now rarely consult them, preferring to race through their cyber counterparts for an hour or so each morning to earmark those few stories that I might want