Young love
I believe my relationship with newspapers began at the age of eight, when we were living on Oakridge Boulevard and the Ottawa Citizen was delivered to our door every afternoon.
I was unnaturally excited by the newspaper. I would wait for it the way other children waited for the ice cream cart. As soon as it arrived, I would grab it, bring it inside, flop down on the floor, and flip to my favourite sections.
I wasn’t precocious: my favourite sections were the comics, Dear Abby, the birth announcements and the adoption column, Today’s Child. (Every day they’d run a picture of some poor kid who needed adopting, along with a story of his or her woeful life so far, and a description of whatever shortcomings he or she might have. In retrospect, it was such an awful invasion of the kids’ privacy, to advertise them in the paper like that, but at the time I loved reading about these kids.)
And I did love the newspaper.
My very favourite thing that the Ottawa Citizen ever did was a series of gold treasure hunts circa 1980. I think the price of gold was skyrocketing at the time, and the Citizen hid a bar of gold somewhere in the city. Every day until it was found, they published a clue as to its whereabouts.
It was wintertime, and you know how Ottawa is in the wintertime. But this contest energized Ottawa and brought us out of hibernation. Thousands of people were puzzling over the clues, getting up off their couches and venturing out into the city to go find that bar of gold. It was the hot topic of discussion in workplaces, pubs, and on the streets. Even the people who weren’t looking for the gold were following the clues and sharing ideas.
As for me, the Citizen’s gold contest became the central focus of my life. Every morning I’d get up early and go buy the paper, read the new clue, brainstorm with John about it, and then we’d head out in search of the gold. Sometimes we were absolutely certain we knew exactly where it was, and we’d race over there only to find other equally certain treasure-hunters, but no gold.
Someone eventually found the gold in a pipe in the wall of the Rideau Canal. The contest had been so popular that the Citizen ran a second one, and possibly a third.
Sigh. Am I the only one with fond memories of their relationship with the newspaper? Or who even thinks of it as a relationship?
You’ve seen my pic with cat and paper at age two . . . I was a devoted follower of Helen Allen’s (Today’s Child) column. Alas my mother, who birthed the nine of us in 10 years, wasn’t as keen to add to the family.
I’ve many fond memories of my relationship with the newspaper but, like many love affairs these days, it has descended to being a mostly online ‘thing’.
Yup. I’m pretty sure you’re the only one.
No you’re not
No, you’re definitely not the only one, ma’am.
But as Lily suggested when the Irregulars -well, okay, I – picked up Jo’s theme and started pawing it over a little more, there are two sides to any relationship, and the Citizen may have stopped trying. Not completely, but in areas that are important to readers.
Some people may be okay with it, but many of us don’t like to be blown off, scammed, lectured to and patronized. John Robson calls it ‘having a viewpoint’ and says it’s fine with him. I’d like to know if it is the same with many of the employees. Overall, it ain’t anywhere near as good as it was under Southam proprietorship.
If it were time for relationship counselling, do you think the Citizen would even agree to come…?
good (kinda) meeting you zoom! next time we can talk. thanks so much for organizing this mornings breakfast. it was fun!
I’ve always loved real live print so I’ll pretty much read anything on paper. Growing up my family alternated every so often between the Citizen and the Journal. I looked forward every day to the comics; some I read with fervour – Steve Roper (with Mike Nomad!), Major Hoople’s Boarding House, Li’l Abner, Pogo…others I skipped over cuz they were just stupid. Now I read them all; what does that say about me?
At about age 12 I won the Encyclopedia Britannica with a prize-winning question – Who Built the First Bridge? – to a regular feature in one of the Ottawa papers. I also remember the young guy who wrote an advice column for kids back in the sixties – name is gone now of course.
In high school I discovered the Globe and Mail and the curmudgeonly Richard Needham, who wrote pungent denunciations of our would-be leaders and the puffed shirts among us. Of more interest to me were his columns discribing, chivalrously if gently mockingly, the travails of the women he was fond of (and they of him), and more scathingly, the vanities and dubious accomplishments of the men surrounding them. Hardly PC, looking back, but still a good basis for appreciating the uppity women in my life later on. (Many years back I grew a big crush on a gal who announced it took her all week to read the Globe’s Focus section.)
The papers, local and otherwise, are all pretty lame these days, thanks to stupid people who value profit over honest reporting, and I am saddened by their demise. There are still wonderful columnists, and great writers I love to rail against, so that’s a good thing but the future looks a lot like recent Doonesbury cartoons. It’s a pisser thinking we will have to ride the bus with a laptop or pod, scanning on-line newstories and our favourite writers – we’ll miss out on the familiar (if unread) columns, the sidebars, and weird little features that newsprint papers provide so effortlessly.
Not only are you not the only one, but we have the identical history with the identical paper. Except it was “Ask Andy” that initially sucked me into reading the paper at age 8. I think it may have been science questions he was asked. I don’t remember. I just remember we had to cut one out for school and I liked it, so I kept reading it, and soon found Abby and Today’s Child on the way. I remember wanting to adopt quite a few of those kids. And I remember really looking forward to the day that I would be big enough to sit on the couch and read the paper, rather than have to have it spread out on the floor in front of me.
I remember the gold bar searches too, and when someone finally found the first in the hole in the Canal wall. It seemed to last forever before it got first out.
When I went away to university, the university store would import a few Citizens and I always had one reserved. I read the local ones too, but I loved the Citizen and keeping in touch.
Reading stuff on the computer is not the same. It saddens me to see newspapers atrophying.
I remember the hunt for the gold bars.
We all went out to Carp to search for bars on one occasion. Our mother told us we had to keep it a secret until we got there and not tell anyone else or they might rush there ahead of us. We drove there efficiently and once there we immediately scoured the parking lot for others that may potentially be trying to get our gold.
Loved the entire experience.
I’m so thrilled that some of you share the same fond newspaper memories as me…and that at least three of us, as kids, wanted to adopt Today’s Child.
Coyote, I love your relationship counseling analogy. Do you think the relationship is salvageable, or should we just accept that we’ve outgrown the Citizen and go our separate ways?
Raino, thank you, but I didn’t actually organize the breakfast. All accolades should be redirected to XUP, who did everything, and very well.
Future Landfill, in my family we were encouraged to look down on Journal subscribers because the Citizen was considered more intelligent and thoughtful. (But I secretly read the Journal at friends’ houses whenever I got the chance, and I liked it too.) My favourite comics as a kid included Brenda Starr, Dennis the Menace, Hi and Lois, Peanuts, and Blondie. (Now I don’t read any comics.) Now here’s an interesting coincidence. The advice column written by the kid was before my time. However, I did write to the Citizen when I was 15 or 16 to pitch the idea of me writing an advice column for kids. I included several sample letters and answers. They wrote back and didn’t say yes or no – they made suggestions for improvements (eg length and so on). I didn’t pursue it, because I thought, at the time, that the absence of ‘yes’ meant ‘no.’ Anyway. I’ll ask you the same question I asked Coyote. Do you think our relationship with the newspaper is salvageable, or is it too late?
Justmakingitup – I wonder if the Citizen ever considered children as part of its demographic? Do your children have the same kind of relationship to the newspaper that we did?
Techwood, I love that you thought of it as “our gold.” LOL.
Oh, and just for the record, my answer was just a wee bit on the facetious side. It’s just the way my brain works…. someone asks “am I the only one who….?” and my first thought that pops in my head is “yup, I’m pretty sure you’re the only one”. And yes, it does drive my partner crazy.
I actually do have very fond memories of the newspaper. My father was in the news business (television) and was an avid newspaper and magazine reader. We had the Charlottetown Guardian delivered daily, and on Saturdays my dad would go to the store and buy 2 or 3 other papers, come home and devour them all. My favourites were Dear Abby, the comics and Letters to the Editor. I would read the letters to the editor in every paper he had. I guess I was always interested in “regular” people’s opinions on things. Maybe that’s why I like blogs
I don’t think the Citizen considers children in it’s demographic, although clearly it used to when I was a kid. I remember that “Ask Andy” was aimed at kids. I’m not even sure they consider people under 30, although they do try to reach out to them.
Mine certainly don’t read the newspaper (and the eldest is almost 13), despite the fact that we subscribe to two (Citizen and Globe), and refuse to do anything on Saturday until the paper is read. They live in a very different world than we did, though. I’m afraid newspapers might be dodo birds.
We got 4 papers a day on the weekdays: the Washington Post in the morning, the Washington Star in the afternoon, the Wall Street Journal (might as well have been written in Martian), and the Washington Evening Journal, my father’s hometown newspaper from Washington, Iowa, which was mailed to us.
I cannot imagine life without a newspaper in the morning. I know that when we get missed, I aimlessly putter in the kitchen, knowing in the back of my mind that there’ll be nothing *good* to read with breakfast.
One of my great fears about retirement is that we’ll end up somewhere with a really crappy newspaper.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a memory of this but my Mum told me that how I learned to read was by sitting on Dad’s lap while he read the newspaper. I guess he’d point out words and I’d learn that letters had meaning. I wish I remembered – it sounds charming.
That’s how I learned to read too. As a result I found myself at first reading things I couldn’t understand. I remember reading that someone came to. i reread the sentence over and ober again and wondered what happened to the last word. Finally I asked my dad where they came to.