No News Is Bad News

​     This morning I came downstairs and headed to the kitchen where I found the kitchen table clean and cleared.

      I looked around the kitchen, on the counters and the kitchen chairs.
      "They're not here," said my hubby Tom.  "They didn't arrive."
      "Oh, you're kidding me," said I.  I hurried to the front door and looked out onto the front porch. 
      Nothing there except the pumpkin, the (broken) swing and the white mailbox where local folks leave messages for Tom,

 ...who is involved in various and sundry community volunteer services and activities.   ​

     Tom put a consoling hand on my shoulder. "We'll around look outside," he said, "maybe they're in the grass somewhere."
     But they weren't. It was all too clear that our newspapers hadn't been delivered this morning, and there would be no New York Times with my tea, no Columbus Dispatch with my toast.
     Before fixing breakfast I paced around the kitchen a little, feeling at loose ends. Usually on such a rare occasion I can find something else to read with my breakfast, some left-over news that I hadn't gotten to from the day before's paper.
       But these days every morning I find myself gobbling up every last savory printed word of interest in both papers,

...so this morning there were no left-overs to chew on.  
     Besides, with the Trump Whistleblower Scandal/Impeachment Investigation exploding with fresh developments and revelations hourly, the previous day's news is already stale.
     So I had nothing to read with breakfast. That is to say, I had no newspapers to devour with breakfast.
      I had to do what everybody else who reads the news does - minus the 16% of Americans who, like, me, still read a printed newspaper -  I pulled out my electronic device.     
     I clicked on CNN, which I generally scan throughout the day for a brief but up-to-the minute patchwork of reports on subsequent news developments,

...after I've gotten my broad morning foundation of satisfying in-depth coverage of national and world events from the Times and local events from the Dispatch.
      I read a couple of brief news updates and short opinion pieces, but then I got distracted by an ad for a cute sweater, which I clicked out of CNN to buy. Then I sighed, shut my laptop, and that was that.
​     Until, thankfully, the papers finally arrived, and just in time for Elevensies.

Reference:
https://futurism.com/social-media-newspapers

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/12/10/social-media-outpaces-print-newspapers-in-the-u-s-as-a-news-source/