Still a soft spot in my heart for newspapers

Back home after four days away, I spent a good couple of hours reading the newspapers that I had missed and that had been dutifully stacked on the kitchen table by our faithful dog sitter. Regardless of what you may have read about the demise of printed newspapers, there's nothing that can beat a quality newspaper with your morning coffee — or a stack of newspapers waiting for your return. Although I had "kept up" with what was going on around the world, in the state and in Wilson while I was gone, it still took me a couple of hours to pore over the accumulated papers, scanning them more than reading them but still slowing down to catch the details in the stories I had not seen elsewhere.

Among the news was the fact that J. Peder Zane, the News & Observer's culture columnist and former book editor, had become one of my peers — a laid-off journalist. Zane wrote a final, farewell column for his N&O readers, which I found painfully honest and observant. I had considered writing a final column after being laid off and went so far as to ask if it might be published, but, in the end, decided to keep my "final column" thoughts to myself.

I was not entirely surprised to see Zane let go, given the pressures on the N&O to cut costs in order to feed McClatchy's debt payments. After his role was redefined from book editor to culture columnist (whatever that is) a couple of years ago, I thought the powers that be were just lining him up to shove him out the door. Unfortunately for readers, the N&O's book pages, once some of the best of any newspaper in the country, went sharply downhill. The focus changed from Zane's erudite literary analyses to whimsical shallowness. We went from Great Books to comics. Too bad for anyone who cares about literature and language.

As it adjusts to reduced advertising revenues, the newspaper industry is making the mistake of laying off solid old hands like Zane, who speak the language of readers, while retaining the video- and trend-obsessed cliche-repeaters in hopes of attracting the lowest common denominator of readers. It won't work. Dedicated readers who love the printed word will always be the heart off newspapers' circulation; other types can't be lured away from TV and video games.

I will continue to read what's left of newspapers, but the thrill of reading prose that soars to greatness or explanations that make me a wiser and better person is getting less and less frequent.