Print

Over the semester, I have had the pleasure of talking to my grandfather about various mass media outlets and how they effected him. This will be my last blog entry for the semester and it will be about print. Print comes in many forms, including magazines, books, pamphlets, and most importantly newspapers. As it has been mentioned before, my grandfather grew up in small Missouri farm town. However, this did not stop my grandfather from getting newspapers and other print items. Growing up, his family received the Quincy Herald Whig, a farm journal, and on Sundays, the St. Louis Dispatch. His family would receive the newspapers only in the evening. This is different then some living in the city, who would received a paper up to 3 times a day.  My grandfather was most likely not getting the most updated information. For one thing, his family only got news once a day, and for another thing, they received their news from a town a half hour away. His family received there newspaper by carriers. I asked him if he ever was a newspaper boy. He relied saying, "no, I lived in the country and was to busy working on the farm."

When he was younger, my grandfather liked looking at the funnies or as we call them today the comics. He also enjoyed reading the sports page and some times a little bit of the front page. Some of his favorite funnies growing up and into adult hood include Beetle Bailey, Peanuts, and pickle.

Next, we moved onto books. Even though Canton is a small town, they did have a library. I asked him if he read many books, and his answer was, "Not as many as I should of!" Mostly he would go to the library to look at pictures of engines, steam locomotives, gasoline, airplanes, and elevators. He liked learning about how they worked and how electricity effected them. It's no surprise that my grandpa ended up being an electrical engineer for Boeing. His interest in the subject stemmed from a young age of going to the library and looking at pictures.  We also talked about catalogs. When asked about them he laughs, and said, "Yes, I would read them. I would look at them in the outhouse and then use them as toilet paper. It offered great bathroom reading." Times have changed only a little. Today, people still read magazines in the bathroom, but we don't use them as toilette paper unless, we are really desperate.

We went on to talk about the changes in the newspaper. According to my grandpa "they've gone to pot" He says they are full of way to many ads, there is no content, its too liberal, and has too much opinion. Some pretty strong beliefs. Of course this does not stop him from reading the newspaper. He still gets it everyday and enjoys reading the sports and sometimes the other articles. My grandfather will also read articles online and reads his books on his new Amazon Fire Tablet. One of my memories of the newspaper with my grandfather is filling out the sudoku puzzles with him, which was one of my favorite things to do with him growing up. Overall my grandfather still enjoys print items, but he is not resistant to the change of these items to the digital world.

The farmhouse my grandpa grew up in. Canton, MO

I have sincerely enjoyed talking to my grandpa about mass media, and how it has effected him. I learned a lot about mass media and my grandpa.