My Own Personal Newspaper

 New York, New York. Newsroom of the New York Times newspaper. Reporters and rewrite men writing stories, and waiting to be sent out. Rewrite man in background gets the story on the phone from reporter outside. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My Own Personal Newspaper

         I've had this fascination with newspapers since early childhood.  My parents always had newspapers in the house and I liked to look through them.  There were the comic pages of course, and the advertisements, but once I learned how to read a whole new world was opened to me.

        The photojournalism was what often attracted my attention.  Some dramatic image would arouse my interest enough for me to read the story.  Then there were all the other curious little stories that were short, but filled with enough information to get my young brain working to figure out the rest of the details.

         Then, starting in fourth grade, current events became a standard assignment on Monday mornings.  We'd be required to clip an article to present to the class.  The presentation part would make me nervous, but I loved searching out the strangest stories I could find.  There was often duplication of stories among the other students, but rarely did anyone bring in the same story as I brought.  I didn't care much for major world events or politics, but I relished finding anything that was kind of "out there"

        Sometimes for fun I would put together my own newspaper.    Once, inspired by the animated television show The Flintstones I created my own version of a prehistoric caveman era newspaper.  The artwork was all drawn in colored pencils--yes, this was an advanced newspaper all in color!  On another occasion my newspaper edition was a facsimile of what my vision of the newspaper of the future might look like.   Maybe my thinking wasn't too prescient in that the edition was still on paper rather than some electronic type media, but it was easier to use paper in order to write the stories and draw out the illustrations.

          In a way, my discovery of the medium of blogging is like being able to have my own publication.    Much like a newspaper or magazine I can present stories and add images.  I'm both reporter and editor.   The control of managing my own blog allows me a far greater creativity than composing a publication by hand.   The best part is that the potential of actual readership is far greater than those single copy "newspaper" editions that I would pass around to my friends and family to read.

        Blogging has opened a fantastic new world of possibilities to all of us who have longed to see our words on published pages and to have readers who actually let us know they've read what we've written.  And even if the readers aren't there, the digital evidence is there to be potentially found by readers someday in the future.

          Of course, I'd much rather be published in an actual printed edition of some mass produced and distributed newspaper or magazine.  That would be the greatest thrill of all.  For now though the blogging will have to do.    Actually it's not all that bad of a way to be published.  And it is practice for that future publication position that I long to one day have.

           Did you ever create your own homemade newspapers or magazines when you were a child?   Did you work on a school publication?    Do you treat blogging as your own personal publication?