newspapers

Newspapers

My second semester of my first trip in college [Houston Community College], I caught a ride downtown each morning with my stepfather and a family friend. During our carpool my dad would read us the New York Times. My stepfather had this wonderful voice – soothing but strong – and it made the news actually interesting. This also developed my love of reading the paper first thing in the morning.

For years I struggled with my misfortune of being one of those people who always ends up covered in newsprint. This made my love of the reading turn into a big black smudgy mess. I endured the laughter of my peers daily because I could not avoid looking like a chimney sweep from the ink coating my entire being!

Thanks to the Net that misfortune is no longer a problem. Now I can enjoy a “paper” without a bit of mess. I love reading the news from all over the place, even if certain newspapers do outshine our Houston Chronicle. Oh our poor local paper….

Every morning I enjoy my coffee reading the publication on their site www.chron.com, but I cringe at how poorly handled the main resource of published information for the third or fourth – depending on the resource - largest city in America is…It sometimes sickens me. I mean how the hell do we expect to expand our minds if the information they are giving us is misprinted, poorly spelled and written for idiots evidently by idiots?

Why do I think they must be expecting their audience to be idiots? Well, try looking at where the readers are allowed to comment…JESUS PEOPLE IS IT REALLY THAT FUCKING HARD TO REMEMBER TO DROP THE SILENT “E” WHEN CHANGING A VERB TO ONE WITH AN “ING”? And what about the letter “Y” – is really that fucking difficult to remember it goes to an “IE” when you want to add an “S” to pluralize it? Really? Isn’t this fucking fifth grade English?

But this horrible reality is not just limited to the Chron.com’s audience. I see it all over the Net. Which completely puzzles me beyond belief, after all if you are reading how are you not retaining HOW things are written? It’s self-evident that you can’t possibly JUST be looking at images – all of them are surrounded by text and some of it MUST be getting slightly caught by the eye and sent to the brain. How come grammaticism seems to have lost all popularity?