2021

inside a gas station in my hometown, usually between the candy and the soft drinks, stands a remnant of a bygone era: newspapers. i always marvel at these embers of the past still lingering proudly into the present, still showing up daily for the passerby, still printing the stories of our time. one reason i still get newspapers is they cut off the addiction of my dopamine-secreting iphone, freeing me to digest the news without the ambush of texts, phone calls, and social media posts that never seem to end. newspapers also silence the echo chamber of cable news, keeping calm with the facts, kindly respecting my senses, and carrying on like cronkite with little room for shouting or conspiracy. and then there’s my house of mirrors, the one we carry in our heads with our biases and our prejudices; newspapers break these feedback loops of solipsism with facts, with opinion, with stories, and generally with the truth—giving me a pulse of the zeitgeist flowing through small towns and big cities near and far, letting me see through the eyes of others as they look in the mirror, as they look at us, as we look at each other. but ultimately it's the role they serve—newspapers, magazines, and the mediums of a free press—that keep me coming back for my morning dose: they inform us, they enrich our debate, and they hold the powerful accountable. as early as a century ago i would have been looking for entrepreneurial hawkers with a bundle, but in that gas station last week i found their successor: a metal rack of dailies, fresh of the press, bearing the story covered around the world for thursday, january 21, 2021

— jk montane