Black and white and read all over

 I just received my first issue of County Highway, a printed newspaper.  That's perhaps not remarkable in itself, until one learns that this is a newspaper that is available only in the analog form.  Apart from a web page to buy subscriptions, no digital version of the paper's content exists.  Want to read a precis on Bad Bunny, last weekend's Saturday Night Live guest host/musical guest?  (I do, since I had no idea who he was.) You must get your hands on a copy of this publication.  A real copy.  To have and to hold.  The main point of County Highway is that it exists only in physical form, the way newspapers and magazines once were.  It is a feature of my life that it has spanned the time period that newspapers were once- and only- paper, then were newspapers that had a small presence online.  Then were fully duplicated online.  And now, for the most part, exist only online.  Such is the case with my local paper, The Birmingham News. When I first came to town three decades ago, The News was one of two dailies in town along with the morning paper, the Post-Herald.  The News outlived the Post-Herald, but when it began the transition to online content, the writing was on the wall.  Or at least on the web page.  The physical print edition died a slow, agonizing death- going from daily to three days a week.  I continued to subscribe, even as content became more meager and haphazardly edited (but that's a whole 'nother topic).  Finally, this past Spring, the print edition was ended and the descendent of The Birmingham News now only exists online as AL.com.  And that made me very sad.

So when I recently learned of County Highway, a print only paper, I was intrigued.  In reality, the bi-monthly paper is really more of a lifestyle and human interest magazine, published in newspaper form.  As they describe themselves:

Some of us fear the specter of an incipient totalitarianism emerging from our laptops and iPhones. Some of us are simply allergic to conformity and brand-names. What we share in common is a revulsion at the smugness, sterility, and shitty aesthetics of the culture being forced upon us by monopoly tech platforms and corporate media, and a desire to make something better. We encourage you to think of our publication as a kind of hand-made alternative to the undifferentiated blob of electronic “content” that you scroll through every morning, most of which is produced by robots.

   So I will read and savor my copy, and do all the things one can do with a physical paper. Read it, stack it up. Lend it to a friend. Tuck it in a briefcase. Read it in waiting room. Pass it around the office. Clip out an article and mail it to a relative. All the things we could do before digits, if maybe not so fast.