Once again, you believed that I'd died, and you were happily sending Mass cards to my family. Or, at least, the few of you who are Catholic were; or those Protestants who know enough to do so. I'm not dead, though. (Sorry, all, I did make a valiant effort, but when I tried to jump off the roof of the Lord Baltimore, I was distracted by a cocktail party. )
Today, while reading the blog o' my sometime-inspirator, sometime-irritant, James Lileks, I hit on a familiar strain. People need newspapers.
The common idea today is that the Big City Daily is gone. Apparently, in the minds of most Americans, there are only two big cities--New York and Los Angeles.
This is clearly ridiculous.
New York may be the nation's largest city, but it is also the nation's most provincial city. It has no concept of anything but itself. It is so convinced of its monumental significance that it cannot conceive of anything in the United States beside itself, and it considers London, Berlin, Vienna and Paris as no more than places in the dim memory of its foul grocers. While I am quite sure that everyone in Topeka has heard of New York, I can guarantee that less than ten per cent of New York City's vast population has any idea that Topeka exists, and even fewer could tell you where it exists.
Los Angeles, though I have--thankfully--never seen the benighted place, has, by the admission of some of its own children, no city at all, but does have seven million people inhabiting a conglomeration of suburbs. I do want to see the town, though, for the sake of the beautiful picture palaces that do still exist there--New York has managed to obliterate most of its screen dreamlands.
There are still quite a few other major cities in the United States, though most of them are shadows of their former selves. Detroit, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, St. Louis--all of them are staggering on in decay, but are nonetheless BIG cities. For those who question the status of, say, St. Louis as a big city, I say to you: spend a couple of years in a town of four hundred people and see what you think then. I have. You'd be surprised how quickly even Hagerstown looks metropolitan.
The argument against the city daily paper is this: We don't need them because we can all get the New York Times delivered to our doors. We can get BBC online and on cable. And, God help us, we can usually get the Washington Post, should we want that nasty pinko rag anywhere near our doorsteps. (Washington and its paper are most significant for their sad delusion that they are, actually, in a class with the rest of the world's capitals.) We can, if we are of a German bent, get Berliner-Zeitung, or Der Standard, online.
Der Standard, however interesting its articles may be, does not provide any information whatsoever about the fire on Greenmount Avenue last night. Nor does it provide any information about the elections in Allegany County. (I don't particularly care about Allegany County myself, but it does have some impact on the rest of the state whether I care about it or not.) Der Standard does not have the obituaries of the lordly Calverts and Weiskittels, or even of the cafeteria ladies at Forest Park High School. It has absolutely no interest in the potential destruction of the once-lovely Fulton Theatre, because it doesn't know anything about Baltimore except its geographic location and its economic connections to Austria.
Thus I sniff at those who find themselves superior because they very publicly claim to NOT read the Sun, or the Times-Dispatch, or the Virginian-Pilot. You may have a good grasp of what's happening in the rest of the world, but do you know what's happening in your own backyard? I do take pride in reading some of the European papers online--but only after scouring the papers of my home states. What good is it to know what's playing at the Burgtheater in Vienna if you don't know what movie is showing at the Byrd?
Today, while reading the blog o' my sometime-inspirator, sometime-irritant, James Lileks, I hit on a familiar strain. People need newspapers.
The common idea today is that the Big City Daily is gone. Apparently, in the minds of most Americans, there are only two big cities--New York and Los Angeles.
This is clearly ridiculous.
New York may be the nation's largest city, but it is also the nation's most provincial city. It has no concept of anything but itself. It is so convinced of its monumental significance that it cannot conceive of anything in the United States beside itself, and it considers London, Berlin, Vienna and Paris as no more than places in the dim memory of its foul grocers. While I am quite sure that everyone in Topeka has heard of New York, I can guarantee that less than ten per cent of New York City's vast population has any idea that Topeka exists, and even fewer could tell you where it exists.
Los Angeles, though I have--thankfully--never seen the benighted place, has, by the admission of some of its own children, no city at all, but does have seven million people inhabiting a conglomeration of suburbs. I do want to see the town, though, for the sake of the beautiful picture palaces that do still exist there--New York has managed to obliterate most of its screen dreamlands.
There are still quite a few other major cities in the United States, though most of them are shadows of their former selves. Detroit, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, St. Louis--all of them are staggering on in decay, but are nonetheless BIG cities. For those who question the status of, say, St. Louis as a big city, I say to you: spend a couple of years in a town of four hundred people and see what you think then. I have. You'd be surprised how quickly even Hagerstown looks metropolitan.
The argument against the city daily paper is this: We don't need them because we can all get the New York Times delivered to our doors. We can get BBC online and on cable. And, God help us, we can usually get the Washington Post, should we want that nasty pinko rag anywhere near our doorsteps. (Washington and its paper are most significant for their sad delusion that they are, actually, in a class with the rest of the world's capitals.) We can, if we are of a German bent, get Berliner-Zeitung, or Der Standard, online.
Der Standard, however interesting its articles may be, does not provide any information whatsoever about the fire on Greenmount Avenue last night. Nor does it provide any information about the elections in Allegany County. (I don't particularly care about Allegany County myself, but it does have some impact on the rest of the state whether I care about it or not.) Der Standard does not have the obituaries of the lordly Calverts and Weiskittels, or even of the cafeteria ladies at Forest Park High School. It has absolutely no interest in the potential destruction of the once-lovely Fulton Theatre, because it doesn't know anything about Baltimore except its geographic location and its economic connections to Austria.
Thus I sniff at those who find themselves superior because they very publicly claim to NOT read the Sun, or the Times-Dispatch, or the Virginian-Pilot. You may have a good grasp of what's happening in the rest of the world, but do you know what's happening in your own backyard? I do take pride in reading some of the European papers online--but only after scouring the papers of my home states. What good is it to know what's playing at the Burgtheater in Vienna if you don't know what movie is showing at the Byrd?
posted by Daniel | 2:29 AM
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Glad to know you're not dead! --'Cita
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