yes, you may

I recently listened to a new podcast called A Life Well Wasted. The program was created by Robert Ashley, a writer I first heard of from listening to the now-defunct GFW Radio podcast on the 1UP Network. That show was ostensibly about computer games but the free-ranging discussions often veered wildly (and hilariously) from any meaningful topical content. The show was much closer to a wacky drive-time radio show, minus the obnoxious sound effects and commercial interruptions. A Life Less Wasted is also like a radio show but rather than continue the unchecked roundtable format that so many other podcasts embrace, this new program is much closer to This American Life from NPR (which has its own excellent podcast). While the first episode is titled "The Death of EGM," referring to the recent closure of the long-running magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly, the program touched upon a few points regarding the decline of print media as a whole in the United States. While normally I would be the kind of person to say "let it go, Indiana," this show actually made me reconsider my position by reminding me of my own, distant connection with publication.

It was just last week that a teacher asked me what "scrapbooker" meant, forcing me to recall a period decades earlier when my parents actually kept a scrapbook of sorts about me. Beyond the usual vacation snapshots (which my father still has), there were a surprising number of clippings from local newspapers about me, be it school related or just random photographs from a soccer game. I don't know if I just kept getting lucky or if the local paper was simply starved for material. Either way, there was a real thrill to seeing my name or face in print (provided I was fully clothed and not eating when the picture was taken) even years later when looking at childhood photos was otherwise considered humiliating.

Years after that local paper which must have been tailing me closed down, I was a very excited contributor to our high school newspaper. Well, by "newspaper" I mean "simple packet of pages stapled together," but it all we had in our small school and I was thrilled whenever I managed to get an article included. Mostly I wrote movie reviews covering whatever I happened to get to see at the multiplex. Knowing my quirks, the movies I watched probably weren't interesting to a majority of the other students, but if it was interesting enough to the editors of the school paper it qualified for inclusion. While my review of Star Trek VI was an easy sell, they were less convinced when I pitched a lengthy series of James Bond trivia questions.

The point of all these fuzzy memories is that there was always something special about having my image or my words published in any format, and that feeling does not translate well in the digital age. With my own website running for almost five straight years, I have easily transmitted my ideas and photographs around the world to thousands of people. Yet I do not feel as proud of feitclub.com as I was of the time that my pitifully simplistic student website in 1995 was heralded in a UR alumni newsletter. At the time, being selected for inclusion in a printed publication, any publication it would seem, trumped all electronic forms. Part of me still feels that's the case today.

Perhaps it's not a matter of being printed on paper as it is passing the necessary vetting process for making it onto the pages of a newspaper or magazine. The ease of digital "publishing" lowers the stakes and subsequently the standards of choosing what material is "fit to print." If something is misspelled or if a fact is mistaken, it's never more than a quick online edit away from being corrected. When ink and presses are involved, everything must be checked and rechecked before making the expensive commitment to actually publishing anyone's words. I can't recall ever reading a typo in copy edition of The Onion, but I've certainly come across the odd error or two in the electronic version.

I'm not going to be one of those people who feels that everything was better when they were a kid or that the convenience and affordability of the Internet somehow invalidates its ability to send ideas worldwide instantly. I know an upgrade when I see it and the speed at which information now moves is an amazing leap forward from the lumbering card catalog days of my youth. However, just like every touchscreen voting machine protestor in the world, I know that there is an added value to recording something onto paper. The idea that somewhere in our village library or inside a filing cabinet in my high school lies a collection of my old material is very comforting. I'm not going to shed any tears over EGM in particular, but if print ever truly dies it will be a sad day.

Labels: A Life Well Wasted, fuzzy memories, writing