Stop the presses
November 20, 2008 | 8:02 am
I haven’t been there in nearly two years — while waiting out a snowstorm and a late friend — and probably haven’t purchased anything there in much longer than that. But there is something sad and unsettling about the prospect of Out Of Town News in Harvard Square closing.
My own news bug was planted when my Dad took me there to find Canadian newspapers for a fifth-grade project on our northern neighbor. I had already shown a knack for writing and the idea that words people wrote and printed on the other side of the world could be available just a few miles from our house a day or two later was exhilarating. Memories of that trip are fuzzy — I had to read the full Globe article to realize we probably went to the original location and not the location it is at today, and I remember writing letters to several Canadian newspapers requesting copies, as we apparently struck out getting rags from Winnipeg and Saskatchewan.
But I do know that Out of Town News, and that nearly-forgotten grade school report, planted the seed that got me to where I am today. My Dad, I am certain, was equally thrilled by Out of Town News for the other side of the equation — he spent almost his entire career as a salesman for printing companies and found ways to be endlessly fascinated by offset presses, four-color processes and watermarked paper.
Of course by the time I started my own print career a decade later, we were on the verge of that period when almost anyone could disseminate words in a matter of seconds, and the death knell was already sounding for print. The company my father spent most of his career with is now long gone, its former headquarters in Worcester now a Marriott.
And so it goes.
Tags: Boston, Family, Newspapers