Neff Zone Column -- February 14, 2009

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Print Edition: February 14, 2009

THE END OF SNIPPETS

I'm a newspaper junkie so the trend toward replacing print editions with digital counterparts is bad news to me. Call me an old curmudgeon, but the fact that the Detroit Free Press will only be home delivered three days per week is life altering for me. Now I see USA Today is hawking a digital edition.

One of the greatest pleasures of life is sharing the morning papers with my wife, passing sections back and forth, and wondering what that "tsk...tsk...tsk" coming from across the table is all about. That experience just can't be duplicated by a computer screen.

Now, I'm a tech savvy guy. I write a blog for SkiNet. I can send a text message. I can write code for web pages. But if you're telling me that people will read with the same depth and breadth via digital newspapers delivered to the one inch screen of their cell phones I'm here to tell you that you're out to lunch.

As for reading newspapers on computer screens, I've been conducting my own experiment by having the Sporting News delivered to me in digital format for the past six months. Sure it's cool, but by the time I log in, load a page, scroll up and down, and zoom in and out I could have read three articles in the print edition.

All that aside, though, what really has me concerned about the movement to digital is the demise of the snippet. People will eventually adapt to digital (they will have no other choice) and that will be fine for the one or two headline stories they'll read each day. What they won't read anymore are the snippets, those tiny pieces of information from all over the country (and world) that give us a vast tapestry of information about the human condition. Like these...did you know?

MICHIGAN: There's a coyote problem in Bloomfield Hills, an upscale suburb of Detroit, so the public safety director has ordered rifles with silencers and scopes so the coyotes can be "controlled," which is a polite term for shot dead.

Another downstate town, Rochester Hills, has a different problem with a deer herd of 1,000. Officials there wanted to "control" about 200 deer in order to thin the herd and limit the damage they are causing. After controlling about 20 deer, however, some citizens objected and the controlling was halted.

I think the solution to both of these problems is self evident. Round up the coyotes and ship them to where the deer are located. The coyotes will eat the deer then the people can control the coyotes. If all this is too gruesome, the only other option is to bring in animal psychologists to counsel all the deer and coyotes to behave themselves.

ARKANSAS: A legislator has proposed an amendment to a bill that would allow people to carry guns into churches. Before, a church had to post a sign if it did not want guns in its building. Now, the church will be able to convey that message in other ways, like an announcement during services or in a printed bulletin.

I'm not questioning the right of an individual to carry a gun, but I am wondering about what kind of a church is so rough that you would have a need to pack heat to a service? What does it say about your fellow parishioners that you feel so unsafe in church that you think it might be necessary to open fire on a member of the congregation? And talk about a tough audience for a pastor delivering a sermon...

NEW JERSEY: In New Jersey there's a proposal to elect legislators in alternating terms. Right now, all legislators are up for election/re-election at exactly the same time – the entire legislature at once. You know, this "all at once" system sounds goofy. But if voters want to "throw the bums out" they can do so in one fell swoop. Sort of intriguing, isn't it?

NEW HAMPSHIRE: Speaking of government, who do you think is the highest paid state government employee on New Hampshire? Nope, it's not the governor. It's the University of New Hampshire's hockey coach, Dick Umile, who makes $382,000 per year. Finally, a state that has its priorities in order, eh?

NORTH CAROLINA: You may not know this, but all those dot-com names you see on the Internet are actually registered and thus owned by someone. For example, I've registered and own neffzone.com, for which I pay an annual fee. If I let that registration lapse, anyone else can claim that dot-com and either use it or offer it for resale.

This fact is good news for a Raleigh, NC man named George Huger who was going through a list of available dot-com names when he stumbled upon GeorgeWBushLibrary.com. It seems the former president (or his people) had the plans for his presidential library but had let the domain name registration expire. Huger bought the dot-com name for $5 and sold it back for $35,000. And you wonder why we have a record deficit.

TENNESSEE: This is pretty nifty. The Reverend Ed Taylor has been performing marriages in Gatlinburg, TN for over 30 years. He recently retired and estimates he hitched around 85,000 couples. Regardless of how those marriages turned out, on those wedding days everyone was happy, which is a pretty nice way to spend a career for the Reverend.

All of these snippets were found in the print editions of newspapers and I would not have stumbled upon them if I had not had the newsprint in my hands. Nothing earth shattering, to be sure, but interesting to know and fun to read. I'm going to miss this when the newspaper no longer is something solid I can hold in my hands. Tsk...tsk...tsk.