Paper free

by Rick Johansen

My loyal reader will be aware that I no longer buy a newspaper. After a near lifetime of actual physical newspaper buying, I finally broke the habit about a month ago. I expected the withdrawal symptoms to be rather like when I gave up smoking on 1st January 1994, to find myself desperately pining for a paper newspaper, but within a day or so, the habit was broken. I doubt that I shall ever buy another one.

It was the hard left pipsqueak Owen Jones what done it. I have taken the Guardian for well over 40 years because I like the idea of there being a newspaper that is truly independent of big business and evil old billionaires. And because its editorial stance, which I would describe as just about left of centre, usually echoes with mine. I enjoy many of its columnists, too, and until recently have tolerated the more extreme hard lefties. But Owen Jones, the former journalist, now political activist, has boiled my urine once too often. Actually, many times too often. Something had to give.

I’ve gone fully digital now and this saves me a startling £500 a year and I deal with the loss of the physical copy by imagining, somewhat optimistically, that this £500 has come straight out of Jones’s fee. Probably not, but it makes me feel better.

My first newspaper was The Sun. My grandparents, as befitted lower working class folk, took the Mirror which even as a youngster I could tell was a far better organ. But The Sun had bare female breasts and, on a good day, bare female bottoms, too. Not for me the excuse of many a man that I got the paper for the sport. It was purely for the girls, Page 3 as it became. I can’t remember when I yearned for something better in a newspaper, like someone who could produce a thought-provoking essay or column, but eventually I did. Hello Guardian but not, at first, Sun.

Increasingly as I matured, I found the experience of buying The Sun akin to buying an ‘adult’ top shelf magazine. It was embarrassing and I dreaded bumping into someone I knew carrying a copy of The Sun. Leaving the shop, I would tuck it inside my Guardian. I can’t recall precisely when, but I tired of taking two newspapers, one to read and one to ogle and settled for the Guardian and, until May 2021, I’ve stayed loyal.

Increasingly, I have noted that newspapers are consumed almost solely by old people, which probably goes some way to explaining why they are so right wing and bigoted. I was one of the few old people buying a newspaper that didn’t hate people of colour, LGBT folk and women. (Newspapers like the Mail hate women. If you go to the trouble of reading it – and I would rather you just took my word on it – you will struggle to argue against it.) I did my bit on a daily basis, like putting a muddy foot on the truly evil papers, or covering them with other papers, but in the end, I thought, sod it. I’ll go digital instead.

I used to be one of those who went to the Nth degree to buy a paper. If my local shop or supermarket didn’t have a Guardian, I’d go on tour to find one. Even on holiday, I’d get my Guardian, which would often be two days old. I’d silently tut-tut the Brits abroad who literally queued for ages until some bloke from Hellenic delivers the Mail and Sun, but I managed to give that up years ago.

Newspapers, as in the physical versions, will gradually disappear because their main demographic is dying out. Young people consume their news via different types of media and nothing will persuade them to buy a newspaper. In the coming years, newspapers will become items in a museum and future generations will wonder why we chopped down the Amazon rainforest to read things that made us hate and feel angry about everything.

I’ve broken the habit, ended the addiction and it’s been totally pain-free. In truth, I wish I’d done it years ago. That would have shown the likes of Owen Jones I was serious.

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