Bad dream?

By Joel Thurtell

 

[donation]

 

Maybe jet lag  accounts for my awful dream.

 

It seemed as if I’d stepped into a Hollywood movie set for a film called “The Future of Newspapers.”

 

Except this scenario was scripted for one newspaper — The Detroit Free Press, the paper where I worked for more than 23 years. The newspaper that doesn’t want to be called a PAPER any more.

 

The dream, or vision, or hallucination happened when I was sleeping in a motel room in Los Angeles, where I’m visiting my son, Adam. I flew in Thursday morning, July 17, from Detroit. On the flight, I set my watch three hours ahead to California time. Right away, I forgot those three hours and began acting as if I was still in Michigan, on Eastern time. Suddenly, as we watched the end of the Batman I movie late Thursday on California time, I realized that in Michigan it was 2 a.m. and I was beat.

 

The next day, Friday, was just fine. I woke up on California time at 6 a.m., drove over to Adam’s house in Whittier. Picked up a copy of The New York Times at the Starbucks on Philadelphia at Greenleaf across from Nixon’s old law office, had some coffee and soft-boiled eggs at Adam’s and then we went wandering around downtown Whittier. He showed me a wonderful bookstore run by the Whittier Public Library where hardback books are priced at 50 cents and a buck. Wow. Bought six or eight hardbacks. Good thing I packed light.

 

The problem — the jet lag — hit me at six today, July 19, which is Saturday morning. My alarm went off and I felt so groggy, I decided to go back to sleep. That’s when it happened.

 

I had this vision, see, where I was walking down a street looking for a newspaper. I came upon a row of vending machines, but something was different. The plexiglas windows were shaped funny. They were vertical rectangles, made to fit a different style of newspaper.

 

Here was a blue and yellow box right here in Whittier, California, with the gothic Detroit Free Press nameplate. But what was this? Something about the shape. It’s up and down, no, why, it’s — it’s — no, this can’t be!

 

The headline is just what you’d expect — three inch letters spelling KWAMEGATE!! Nothing odd about that. Sexcapades, perfidy and crime. The scandal du jour. Nothing new.

 

It’s the SHAPE of the PAPER that makes this such a bad dream.

 

It’s a tabloid!

 

I remember in my dream thinking, Well, at least the format fits the content — sex and crime are Job One at the Freep these days.

 

But Michigan’s oldest newsPAPER now a TABLOID like News of the World and the National Enquirer?

 

This wasn’t the worst of the dream, though. In this vision, I went back to the vending machine the following day to buy a Free Press. Lo and behold, the box was empty. The following day, empty again. Why, they’d gone to printing the PAPER every third day!

 

What kind of PAPER is this?

 

Just as I muttered, “So long, Free Press, it was nice to know ya,” my alarm went off.

 

What a relief. It was all a dream.

 

It WAS a dream, wasn’t it?

 

Author’s note: I wish it were a dream. I’m hearing from people inside the Free Press that tabloid shaping and twice-a-week publication is a distinct possibility.

Contact me at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com