Have you hugged your newspaper today?

     I've been reading newspapers all my life. Growing up where I did, my paper of choice was the Centralia Daily Chronicle. Centralia was 40 miles away from Mossyrock, where I lived, but it was the closest daily paper. The Chronicle was delivered late every afternoon, and it was one of the highlights of my day.
    Life was very different in the mid-70's. I was a fledgling news junkie without a dealer. Obviously, there was no internet, but there was no 24 hour news stations either. My access to news was limited to local and national news on ABC and NBC (we only got two channels, and really, ABC was the only one that came in clearly) and the Daily Chronicle. 
     I was usually out at the box, retrieving our paper within minutes of our carrier delivering it. I was the biggest St. Louis Cardinals fan in Lewis County (I may have been the only St. Louis Cardinals fan in Lewis County) so I would always pull the slim sports section out first. The emphasis was always on local high school sports, so there would only be a small write-up of each Major League game, but the Chronicle was great about printing every available box score. I could spend 15 or 20 minutes poring over a single box score, recreating the game in my mind. 
     The front page itself focused on local comings and goings, which interested me less than the national and world news, so I always read the inside of the front section next. I don't know why, really, but I was fascinated by reports from the war in Viet Nam or what was going on with the Watergate scandal.
     More than a source of news, though, the Chronicle was also a record of personal milestones. The story at the top of the blog today was the first time my picture ever appeared in the Chronicle. Of course, it had to be when I was wearing Kabuki makeup and platform shoes. I'm sure my mom was so proud. When I made the honor roll, or was in the Prom court, news of it appeared in the Chronicle.  My first published writing was a letter I sent to the Editor of the Chronicle in 1976, chastising them for alleged bias in their presidential coverage that year. If they had known that the person on the other end of that letter was only 16, I don't know if they would have printed it, but they didn't know, so they did. I still have a copy of that letter, 36 years later.
     And... that's what I'm wondering, I guess. With news and information moving more and more to the internet and blogs and the 24 hour a day news cycle, everything seems so much more disposable. Will anyone be holding on to an online posting decades after the fact?
     I'm happy to say that the paper I grew up with is still in business, changing with the times. They have a Facebook page. They have a thriving online presence, updated constantly. When we decided to have a KISS II reunion a few years ago, the Chronicle was there once again, telling the story of another chapter in our lives. Newspapers large and small have been closing up shop over the last decade. It makes me happy that the paper I grew up with has beaten those odds and is still bringing Garden Club meeting times, high school football scores and local political corruption to the masses, just like they've done for 123 years.