May 1922: When the paper doesn’t come
Posted on March 16th, 2009 – 7:16 PMBy Ben Welter
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This entry is dedicated to the men and women who are putting together the final edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer tonight. Hearst has pulled the plug on the scrappy paper, migrating the news operation to the Web with a drastically reduced staff. Can a 146-year-old print publication make the leap to an online-only subscription business? Alas, not likely.
Whether or not they flock to seattlepi.com, Seattle residents will miss the print version. The poem below was published in May 1922 in the Presspatch, the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Dispatch employee newsletter of the period. It also appeared in the Jan. 15, 1921, issue of Mixer & Server, the newsletter of the Hotel and Restaurant Workers International Alliance and Bartenders International League of America. The author is unknown.
Father and His Paper.
My father says the paper he reads ain’t put up right.
He finds a lot of fault, he does, perusin’ it all night.
He says there ain’t a single thing in it worth while to read,
And that it doesn’t print the kind of stuff the people need.
He tosses it aside and says it’s strictly on the bum
But you ought to hear him holler when the paper doesn’t come.
He reads about the weddin’s and he snorts like all get out,
He reads the social doin’s with a most derisive shout,
He says they make the paper for the women folks alone,
He’ll read about the parties and he’ll fume and fret and groan;
He says of information it doesn’t have a crumb –
But you ought to hear him holler when the paper doesn’t come.
He’s always first to grab it and he reads it plumb clean through,
He doesn’t miss an item or a want ad — this is true.
He says they don’t know what we want, the durn newspaper guys.
He’s going to take a day sometime an’ go and put ’em wise.
Sometimes it seems as though they must be blind and deaf and dumb
But you ought to hear him holler when the paper doesn’t come.
