Extra! Extra!

A newspaper anomaly sprang up again this week when Senator Barack Obama won the presidential race. People all over the world snatched up all the major newspapers they could find with headlines declaring Obama's victory.

A line of people looking for Wednesday's New York Times formed around their building. The NYTs printed more copies. Within hours the election edition appeared on eBay with a $200 price.

Why, when newspaper publishers across the United States are downsizing or even closing due to the lack of readers, does the public demand a solid print copy of the news when there is a major headline?

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"Were it left to me to decide whether we should have government without newspapers, or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." - Thomas Jefferson, 1787

“Newspapers cannot be defined by the second word -- paper. They’ve got to be defined by the first word -- news.” - New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberg, Jr.

“Here is the living disproof of the old adage that nothing is as dead as yesterday’s newspaper...This is what really happened, reported by a free press to a free people. It is the raw material of history; it is the story of our own times.” - Henry Steel Commager, historian, 1951

Quotes located at www.wan-press.org - The World Association of Newspapers