Rant #1,914: My Back Pages ... It Happens Each Day

As I have said in previous Rants, I love to read the newspaper in the morning. It is a routine that I have had for much of my adult life, and although online news appears to be the way news delivery is going, I much prefer to read the newspaper to get my news, and then I pick up the latest news from the Internet as the day goes on.

I start the newspaper from back to front, because I like to start reading the sports page first.

I guess I am a true sports fan, and have been since I was a little kid, and what better way to ease into the harder news than by starting out on the sports page? Even our late former president, Gerald Ford, admitted that as our commander in chief, he checked out the sports pages first, so why not me?

Once I get through the sports pages, I don't necessarily flip the paper over to get right to the news.

The next section I get to is the obituaries, where some of the most interesting stories of the day can be found.

People passing away is nothing new, of course, but some of the people covered in the obituary section really led remarkable lives; some were famous, some weren't, and sometimes the lives led by people who perhaps had one stroke of brilliance that gained them some notoriety is more interesting than people who were famous and well-known.

And when I am done with the obituaries, I still don't necessarily flip the paper over just yet.

I have found that one of the most interesting sections in the entire paper can be found in the news coverage at the back of the newspaper.

Yes, the main news of the day is in the front of the newspaper, but there is plenty to chew on in the back, too.

The back news is where you get coverage of events, people and things that maybe don't deserve main coverage in the front of the newspaper, but are interesting nonetheless.

The articles are also basically much shorter than what you can find in the front of the newspaper, and that makes the back news a pretty quick read.

For instance, in yesterday's newspaper, there was a story about zookeeper that was killed by a tiger in Britain ... news, but not hard news, and interesting, even in its brevity.

According to the report, a tiger killed a female zookeeper on Monday in Hamerton Zoo Park, which is 80 miles north of London.

Police reported that a tiger entered an enclosure with a zookeeper, and evidently, the tiger attacked the zookeeper, and she died at the scene. However, the tiger did not escape from the enclosure; one could surmise that the tiger felt encroached upon by the zookeeper, and attacked her, and the attack was fatal. The name of the dead zookeeper was not released, nor the fate of the animal.

That story was all of about 50 or so words. Certainly, it is not Page One stuff, or even Page 25 stuff, but it is interesting for what it is.

I go through the back news section, and then, finally, I turn the paper over to move on with the harder news.

All of this makes the journey through the newspaper more fun and more interesting.

I don't know how you read the newspaper--or if you read it at all--but this is a ritual I have been going through for decades, and I am not about to stop any time soon.

Yes, my newspaper is truly black and white (and in color nowadays) and read all over.