Newspaper Experience

As the son of the editor of The Arlington Sun, I'm well acquainted with the world of newspapers. I know that producing a paper is much more difficult than a lot of people think it is. I also know that if you want frequent favorable coverage, be nice to your newspaper man.

I've had some actual experience with stuff getting published in The Arlington Sun. In my junior and senior year of high school, I wrote senior features. I'll inflate my ego here and say they were quite good in comparison with the features written by other people. They have even drawn the attention of such people as the top aide in Tim Johnson's Sioux Falls office, who has described them as Lovecraftian, a reference to H.P. Lovecraft. There, now I'll get off my high horse.

As far as papers I read, I suppose I do read the Argus Leader occasionally because my family subscribes to it. However, I'm not as interested as I should be in regional news.

Whenever my dad and I go to Brookings, he usually stops to buy a copy of the USA Today. This is the main paper I read because it's national. Their baseball coverage gets heavily scrutinized by me because that's part of the fun of being an avid baseball fan. Also I'm very interested in national news, so the USA Today is the paper that provides the best fit to my interests.

As far as the future of newspapers, I know they are dying. This makes me somewhat sad because I have fond memories of sitting at a restaurant and reading them. At the same time, I realize the evolution of news lies with the Internet. Still, for as much as I like the iPad, I find it to be a pain to carry it around everywhere. It would also be more cumbersome to eat and read at the same time.