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I lost two friends and a part of myself

Last week I lost two good friends and with them, I also lost a part of myself. In fact, their departure affected me more than I first realized.

Last Thursday, it was announced the closing of Rocky Mountain News (RMN), the oldest daily newspaper in Denver, published for 150 years. Last Saturday, it was announced the death of radio legend Paul Harvey, who from 1951 graced the American airways.

I never worked for the News and I never wrote a single story for that newspaper. I was just a reader. I read it every day, beginning, of course, with the comics. And I never met Paul Harvey in person. I was just a listener, one among many millions. His voice and his style helped me to learn English many years ago and more recently kept informed every day. And on occasions, I was even able to impress some friends with a retelling of “the rest of the story.”

The closing of the RMN and the passing of Paul Harvey represent the end of an era in American journalism, both for radio and for print media. And since journalism is my profession, the end of the era affected me emotionally and led me to reflect on my own present and on my future.

I often say I am not in the business of cutting trees or asking others to do it for me. In other words, I prefer to use digital media instead of paper every time that’s possible. In fact, I share most of my information digitally, even in those cases when until recently a printed copy would have been needed.

For example, I rather read the digital edition of a book than a printed copy. Having said that, I think there is still something special, almost magic in a printed edition of a newspaper or a book.

Holding a new newspaper in your hands, specially early in the morning when the paper still smells fresh and the ink is not even dry yet so you can get your fingers dirty turning the pages cannot be compare to read the same paper on a monitor attached to a computer.

And one thing is to do a puzzle using your own handwriting on a newspaper on top of the kitchen table and another very different thing is to complete the same puzzle on a web site.

At the same time, Paul Harvey’s passing opens a question for modern journalists about how well-informed and how connected we are with our own past and with the world. It also force us to think about the existence (or lack of thereof) of mentors and models for the next generation of journalists.

In other words, the future of journalism is at risk. That’s nothing new, of course. I firmly believe there will always be some kind of journalism, but journalism is adapting to a time when reporting has been transformed into selecting relevant stories in an avalanche of irrelevant information.

News, Harvey, rest in peace.

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