Grocery stores put the items most often purchased — milk, eggs, bread and so forth — in the back of the store. That is not because they don’t realize those are the items you most often “drop by” to grab quickly on the way home from work.
The grocer wants you to run the gauntlet (hopefully with an empty stomach) through the cookies and ice cream and potato chips, as well as the fruits and vegetables. Maybe you will see a lot of other things you “want” during the half-mile trip to the things you “need.” You might even see a few more things you actually “need.”
Traditionally, printed newspapers have been organized the opposite of grocery stores. The informational “junk food” — the comics and the horoscope and the advice column about your love life — are in the back of the newspaper. The stories the editors think you “need to know” — but are too ignorant and self-indulgent to “want to know” — are placed on the front page.
Grocers are pragmatists, who see their job as turning the $10 trips you and I try to take through the self-checkout into $150 journeys through the full-service line. They know you and I are self-indulgent, indecisive and out of control.
Editors are idealists who see their job to be to encourage you and me to consume the information we need in order to become informed and contributing citizens of the community. They know you and I basically are ignorant and not greatly motivated to change that state of existence.
Yet, as self-indulgent and ignorant as we are, human beings are innovative. We always seem to find ways to do things “our way.” That is why grocery stores are faced with competition from convenience stores. That is why many of those who once read printed newspapers now turn solely to the internet.
Why walk half a mile to the back of a superstore for a loaf of bread when you can pick it up (along with a 300-ounce Polar Pop) nearly curbside, at the little convenience store on the corner? Why have some editor try to lure you into reading the story about the new landfill the city plans to put in your backyard when the internet will take you straight to the story about rumors that Kim Kardashian and Kanye West plan to adopt a West African Aardvark?
Why be confused by printed newspaper pages, where news articles are on news pages, opinions are on editorial pages and advertising is clearly marked as advertising? We can just Google our way to a web site that tells us exactly what we want to hear and that we are correct about everything we already believe — where the confusing distinctions between fact and opinion are removed for our convenience — where no meddling editor tries to tell us we should care more about the new landfill than Kim Kardashian or the Chicago Cubs?
As Google will tell you in the words of Thomas Gray (whoever he was), “Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.”
Old Tom was indeed a wise man. Life can be a simple thing indeed, if we only learn to filter out all those confusing options grocers and editors keep putting in our way.
Bud Herron is a retired editor and newspaper publisher who lives in Columbus. He served as publisher of The Republic from 1998 to 2007. His weekly column appears on the Opinion page each Sunday. Contact him at editorial@therepublic.com
