In today’s print column, I wrote about a visitor I got here at the office.
Actually, that column was supposed to be about two recent visitors, but as usually happens, it started to run long. That frequently happens when I sit in front of the keyboard.
But I have been remiss in not thanking this person as well.
I have often written about my very first job, delivering 45 Philadelphia Evening Bulletins all over my home town.
That struck a chord with Mario Olivetti. He too had a Bulletin route, but he did his on foot in the city. The Delco resident called me and wondered if I’d be interested in some old Bulletin memorabilia he had.
I told him I certainly would.
When he stopped by the office a few nights later, we had a great conversation about our similar starts in the business world as Bulletin delivery boys.
And about the news racket in general.
To say the industry has changed is a little like saying the Phillies are having a bad season. Ya think?
Readers interests shifted. Society changed. The “afternoon” paper, such as the Bulletin, no longer fit in. They closed the doors to the Bulletin back in 1982. I still have a copy of the last edition. It was just a few months later that I started work here at the Daily Times.
Like me, Olivetti is a print guy. We talked about how much we enjoyed consuming that inky print edition every day. I lamented that the industry now is undergoing another convulsion, once again brought on by changes in readers’ habits.
With the advent of the Internet, we have taken what was once a single daily deadline every night and compressed it to the point where our deadline is right now, and five minutes from now, and a half-hour after that. We now have the ability to deliver news 24 hours a day, even though we still create that print edition every day.
A lot of days it can be overwhelming.
I got the feeling in talking to Olivetti that he longed a bit for those days when we were both kids, delivering Evening Bulletins to readers who couldn’t wait to get their hands on the “latest” news.
Today readers are still demanding that we give them the news when they want it; and it’s the same reasoning that put papers like the Bulletin on death’s door that the quaking newspaper industry is trying to come to grips with.
Now we’re wondering if an entire industry is in jeopardy. It’s not only when, it’s also how and on what. Readers now want their news delivered on their phones and tablets, even more so than the quaint print edition.
Mario, it was a great conversation, and a great gesture for a reader to make.
“I just kind of thought from the way you write that you would appreciate some of this stuff,” Olivetti said.
Mario, you have no idea.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
I still cling to those very same values that I used in delivering the Bulletin, and that I’ve used in a newspaper career that has now spanned more than three decades.
I just do it in different ways.
My thanks to Mario Olivetti for reminding me of how it once was. And in reality how it still should be.
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