These days kids probably wake up to their parents sitting in front of the family computer with a cup of gourmet coffee or a latte.

The computer was the first threat to the newspaper business. These days the computer isn’t as big a threat as the fact that the economy is so bad, people know they can either watch the news on TV or pull it up on the computer.

Newspapers have also been a great historical source to look back on to see how times have changed, as well as searching for genealogical information on births and deaths. Flipping through the pages and reading the want-ads, garage sales and personal ads were also an interesting thing to do as you got ink all over your fingers.

As times change and technology takes the lead,  old ideas and practices will soon be a thing of the past. The job market is already bad. How many jobs will be lost when all the newspaper offices go out of business?!!

As we feel sad over newspapers going out of business, we might want to be concerned about magazine subscriptions as well. Personally I love flipping through the pages of a magazine and looking at all the beautiful pictures that I’m holding in my hands. If you think about it newspapers and magazines are something of substance that you can hold in your hand. Online subscriptions will be here one day and gone another, only remaining there until the website editor decides they are no longer needed and discards the page. You can’t collect them for future possible value. If you think about it, magazines are practically an art form and it will be sad if they disappear completely.

I’m 43 and I know that all my friends used to save their teenage heart throb magazines, because they meant something to us. For me it was “Tiger Beat”. My high school mascot was a Tiger and it just seemed to be the right fit for my heart throbs as well.

In closing, I would just like to say that we should all think hard about keeping at least one magazine subscription at all times. If we continue to use the internet for all of our needs, we may just end up with that. The internet. We’ll have all been turned in to a type of robot that trudges to the computer for every personal need (shopping, reading, writing, banking, working) what will be next, all of us sitting in front of the computer to watch our minister preaching as well? This will reduce the need to travel, so nobody will be driving much either (that could be good and bad), but what kind of life would this be? There would be no true joy in life anymore.

These things that we do daily are more enjoyable to us subconsciously than we are even aware.  Like they’ve always said, “You don’t know what you have got until it is gone”!

So…go out and buy yourself a newspaper and a magazine today and just enjoy an evening in bed looking at them before you nod off to sleep tonight.

And…no…I don’t work for a newspaper or magazine. I’m a work-at-home mom who sometimes misses being at an office working like I used to.