Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Let's Get Digital



















Here's a nice holiday gift: Alberto Korda: A Revolutionary Lens (2007) with foreward by Diana Diaz, edited by Mark Sanders and Cristina Vives. Alberto Díaz Gutiérrez aka Korda (1928-2001), the photographer who brought several icons of the 1960s into being.

I was reminded of classic pre-digital photography recently after coming across an article about how the Polaroid Corporation is discontinuing its instant film developer in lieu of its mini PoGo ZINK printer. Like it or not, let's all get digital!






The Detroit Free Press and Detroit News will soon be scaling back home delivery to three days a week.

I remember helping a cousin and a friend deliver papers back in the early 1970s, by bike and by foot. These were strange pre-dawn adventures -- that and trying to collect relatively puny subscription fees from recalcitrants and oddballs later in the day. Let's not forget dogs, guns and general carrying on. When 1978 rolled around, the retro theme song we should have operated by came around, too: Warren Zevon's "[Send] Lawyers, Guns, and Money." Today even more so!













There's oh so much more to write about regarding newspapers, from acquiring them to reading them -- but I'll save it for future posts. Somebody go out and buy a damned paper, eh?

(Actually, it's the collapse of classified ad money that's really hitting hard, replaced by internet ads, eBay and other digitized forms of wheeling dealing).



















Anyone else remember the big controversy when USA Today came out?

Today's Rune: Protection.

6 comments:

the walking man said...

When all of us, and everything we do is reduced to 10101010 then we we all be able to say; "I have been digested as the news of the universe, digested and shat out."

"Guilty am I"; says I. I don't buy the news anymore.

Anonymous said...

The only controversy I remember about USA Today when it came out was a general sense that it couldn't be taken seriously as a newspaper...which hasn't really changed.....

Gotta admit, the only newspaper I generally buy is the Sunday NY Times...and I've got mixed feelings about the decline of the newspapers, since every Sunday I'm shocked by the pile of dead tree matter I end up with....

Anonymous said...

MY FAVORITE PARTS OF THE NEWSPAPER ARE THE COMICS, CROSSWORDS AND TOM FREIDMAN. MY HUSBANDS ARE THE SPORTS PAGES.

Charles Gramlich said...

Lana has so much more enjoyed photographer now that she has a digital camera. but I'm going to miss newspapers.

Erik Donald France said...

Thanks all for the comments -- very interesting ;->

Distributorcap said...

it will not be long before all newspapers stop printing on paper -- they will be strictly on line