Times may change, but I’ll always want my newspaper with my first cup of coffee

Every morning, a copy of The St. Joseph Gazette hit the front porch before daylight, and if it didn’t, my grandmother went on a rampage. Having raised a paperboy — my dad — she expected the same service he delivered, although she didn’t always get it.

That morning newspaper was one of two delivered each day. The St. Joseph News-Press arrived in the late afternoon, but The Gazette was the one that kicked off the day.

Pop started reading it with his first cup of coffee, usually with a fragrant Raleigh cigarette burning in one hand as he perused the news. By then, I had been delivered to school by my mother en route to her job at the local Social Security office. By the time Granny put breakfast — bacon or sausage, eggs and biscuits on the table, it was her turn to read the paper and Pop’s to discuss current events.

One of their favorite topics was learning who had died. Reading the obituaries sparked a discussion, more often heated than not, over whether they knew the recently deceased. In addition to parsing out local, state and national news, my grandparents also enjoyed a healthy argument over the daily retro article on what had happened 10, 25 and 50 years previously.

That morning newspaper was a standard in their house, and even though my parents both worked, newspapers held a place of honor in our home as well. On Sunday mornings, the paper was dissected, with my mom getting first dibs on the best parts, such as the comics, while I waited my turn.

The first time a piece I wrote was published came in a Saturday edition of The Gazette, on a page that allowed kids to show off their artwork or writing. I penned a poem about the olden days — never far away in old St. Joe or in my grandparents’ daily discussions. And it was accidental, but a copy of my first byline ended up in a glasses case buried with my grandfather.

Those were the golden days of newspapers. Today’s are dark in comparison.

I eventually moved to a small town in the far southwest corner of the state. The local newspaper was an evening daily. The larger paper, The Joplin Globe, was a morning paper. During my student years at Missouri Southern State University, I usually bought both The Kansas City Star and The Joplin Globe to read before class. Later, as a Globe subscriber, I got my daily copy in the mail — long after that first cup of joe.

I recently ended a long career in local media, first in radio and most recently for The Neosho Daily News and their sister publication, The Aurora Advertiser. I served first as a columnist, then a stringer, then a full-time reporter and then editor.

The newspaper business has changed. Younger readers start their day with news on their tablet or phone via social media. As our number of subscribers dwindled, the age of our average reader rose.

Along the way, I wrote for a number of papers, including columns for The Joplin Globe, and I did a lot of freelance work. Now, in 2020, a year like no other, I’m returning to that freelance world once more. I also plan to work on more fiction. As an author, I’ve been too tied up with journalism to write prose for three years or more.

I’d still prefer to have a morning newspaper, delivered to my porch while the coffee is still hot, but that’s not likely going to be with us forever. It is what is: a different time and place.

Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy is a former newspaper editor and reporter. She writes fiction and freelance articles from her home in Neosho, Missouri, home of Fort Crowder, which Mort Walker made famous as Camp Swampy in the comic strip “Beetle Bailey.”

This story was originally published December 24, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Times may change, but I’ll always want my newspaper with my first cup of coffee."