Last page of our newspapers looms

A million years from now, when (assuming there is a “when”) sentient creatures dig up the fossils of our kind, they will find a curiously hunched creature, one hand a twisted claw, held palm-up, close to its face. The claw might even contain the brittle remains of a smartphone … though the longevity of modern phones means they’re hardly going to be found like Roman coins, as sparkly as the day they were lost.

Perhaps these future archaeologists will also uncover the equivalent of a Rosetta Stone to help them figure out what they’ve found. If they do, it will say one simple thing: “Newspaper killer.”

The names City Press, Rapport, Beeld and Daily Sun won’t figure on the stone, of course. Their titles will fade as quickly as they rose. For City Press, that day began in 1982 as the “Golden City Press”— a fine name for a Joburg paper — and just yesterday, in 2002, for the Daily Sun.

The knives are already out … from people who say it’s been a long time coming and use the words “trashy” in the comments section, and other experts who point out that “everything is digital”.

Indeed. Still, cold comfort for reporters, editors, proofreaders, photographers, sales reps, the two people in the library where clippings and photos are archived, the receptionists and the people at the printing press where the papers roll off at lightning speed while you’re asleep. No comfort for the corner shop that sells  the papers or for the guys who drive the bakkies laden with warm bundles of newsprint into the night. Icy comfort for the guy selling newspaper at the traffic lights … or flipping a paper over the gate as he rides by.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, those papers have gone, the presses are rust …