A question for the Newseum (newspaper museum) repository
With the many complaints that the Statesman garnered from not having featured the eighth anniversary of September 11 on its front page; it made me wonder: What did the majority of front pages of our nations newspapers feature on
The Statesman should test market edible information products
After delivering millions of sometimes-bland newspapers, I finally came up with a recipe ripe to compete with the Internet; via products you can simply eat, rather than wastefully toss out or recycle:
Start out small, like at the food mall, and then mix nutritious soy based ink with cellulose news columns. Wrap into hermetically sealed rice paper, stuffed with ads. Orient the A Section to include everyman’s essential vitamins, with a whiff of caffeine providing the Buzz for B. In winter, Lifestyles could supply higher Vitamin C levels.
On rare occasions articles come along that are so well written, such as Zimo’s overlooked diving ducks that they don’t need extra spices to whet readers hardy appetites.
To alleviate rogue dogs from snatching the tasty wraps from the ground, require home subscribers to maintain a sanitary Statesman box, modified in the form of a child’s toy oven. When neighbors see subscribers pull out steamingly nutritious news wraps, they, too, will greatly desire your munchable broadsheets.
Your first edible edition could proudly proclaim, “Newspaper naysayers eat their words.” To prove this is not a half-baked idea, you could swiftly upgrade your Internet version to include text-message toast. (This is credible)
P.S. When the day comes that you can strengthen your rice paper by bonding it with edible hemp fibers; that too, will be a newsworthy event unto itself.
Nice job Statesman
Kudos to the heads-up Idaho Statesman front desk personnel for recognizing that Eusebio Arriaga’s remarkable life story deserved much more than a cold obituary draft and for calling Tim Woodward to help.
A further step Mr. Arriaga might consider taking (if he has not already yet done so), is to share his interesting narrative, by recording it orally with one of Idaho Regional Historians. As I started writing this, the Statesman ran an in-depth story about oral history programs, where they recommend several ways of participating in these.
It would also be nice to see libraries and historical societies link their websites in better with those of local newspapers and vice versa. For instance, when a writer tells a remarkable story such as Mr. Arriaga’s, readers who are curious to discover more, could link directly into a regional history database.
A way for the Statesman and other newspapers to continue to be innovative, in our fast-paced information age, would be to direct special project managers to develop working relationships with regional library historians and other oral history program leaders.
Which
