Thinking back to my former life

A little taste of deja vu courtesy of Ray Schroeder's post about the decreased use of newspapers in the classroom, which comes courtesy of Reuters. I mixed in my own sour grapes, by the way...

Flashback ten years: It's Year Five as a daily newspaper reporter, most recently at The New Haven (CT) Register. And it's a sorry state of affairs. In between stories about the weather (either too much or too little of it) and stray animals, I occasionally get a chance to write something interesting. But wait, the Lotto jackpot hits $50 million and off I run to the convenience stores to interview would-be winners. Tomorrow I'm assigned to write a feature about line dancing at the senior center.

Back to 2007: It's Year Eight as a teacher, exclusively at Branford (CT) High School. Every day I walk past a stack of Registers piled in the school's mail room, waiting to dirty up the fingers of any takers. So I'm not shocked when I read in the Reuter's article that local papers have fallen behind because they haven't adequately kept pace with the world on which they report, in this case by failing to utilize their online versions for use in the classroom. It seems to me that's why I fled the business in the first place.