I started reading the newspaper when I was 5 years old. I read the Morning Call at breakfast with my Aunt Essie and I read the evening Times with Uncle Bob. Later, when we moved to Pittsburgh, we got the Pittsburgh Press every evening. I’d read it after dinner and with breakfast the next day.
My favorite parts were the comics, the political cartoon and the columnists. I liked reading thought provoking essays and humorous articles. I read advice columns from Dear Abby and Ms. Manners. I was not interested in Finance or Sports at all. I would only read them when I was desperately bored and had nothing else to read.
I admired certain columnists like Mike Royco, Phil Musick, Dave Barry and Diana Nelson Jones who would crank out stories, essays and commentary on local issues, national issues and life.
I also loved clever headlines – especially ones that were alliterative, enigmatic or satirical.
I never wanted to be a writer. I was a math and science fanatic. Writing to me was following rules for grammar and sentence structure, using the thesaurus to find words, and drafting whatever my English teacher needed from me to give me a A. I found English classes to be dull, repetitive and uninspiring.
I struggled to write anything creative, thought provoking or original.
I was thinking the other day that I’d like to write a weekly column for a newspaper now.
It’s too bad that it’s too late for me. The industry has devolved into online click bait articles with poor editing, Twitter headlines and quotes from TikTok. I couldn’t be a columnist like the I admired my entire life.
And then I realized I am already this right here on my blog. The difference is that I’m not getting paid for it, I don’t have an editor and I don’t have nearly the readership of my columnist idols.
If I had those, it would undoubtedly effect what I wrote.
My all time most popular post is Why You Should Always Be Training Your Replacement. Until 2021, this post attracted more readers than any other.
Lately it’s been usurped by Why I Won’t Get A Colonoscopy and My Second Inguinal Hernia Surgery and Recovery.
None of these are my favorite posts. They don’t even make the top ten for me personally.
So I guess it’s a good thing I’m not getting paid to do this. I’d have a hard time bowing to the constraints of popularity, algorithms and clickbait.