A Kobe Bryant keepsake
Does anybody still keep newspapers as mementos of historic news and sports events?
The Daily News will offer something like it on Sunday. The sports section in Sunday's paper will include a Kobe Bryant poster. The full-page, full-color photo is something to save to commemorate the Lakers' star winning his first Most Valuable Player award this week.
I grew up in a household that put notable newspapers away in a dresser drawer, including ones my parents held onto from World War II and the Kennedy assassinations. Unfortunately, it wasn't an airtight drawer. We ended up with some crumbly old newsprint.
Almost always, the fun is reading the other stuff in those papers, the minor news and the ads. Hey, look who led the Cal League in hitting that day! That's cool, but did you know sofas used to cost $8?
Maybe these days families keep printouts of news reports from the Web, or capture and save Web-page images, but that wouldn't be the same.
My dad kept the paper from Aug. 17, 1977, with the headline about Elvis Presley's death, though Elvis isn't why Dad kept it.
The other big headline was about unexpected, torrential rain in Southern California. A couple of days earlier, our house had been re-roofed, and Dad was proud of his preparedness. At the top of page 1, he wrote: "New roof completed 8/14/77."
So saving papers is a personal thing.
Since I became an editor and got an office bookcase, I've been adding to a stack of keepers on a shelf. In the past year, they've included pages about the deaths of Benazir Bhutto, Norman Mailer, William F. Buckley and W.C. Heinz, the retirement of Daily News restaurant critic Larry Lipson, the resignation of Eliott Spitzer, the withdrawal of Mitt Romney, the Oscars, Bruce Springsteen's Sports Arena concerts, the Mitchell Report, Kobe Bryant's trade demand, the Giants' Super Bowl win, USC's Rose Bowl win, UCLA's hiring of Rick Neuheisel, and the Ducks' Stanley Cup triumph (which both the Daily News and Los Angeles Times headlined "Webbed Feat").
I can't keep all of those forever. Mitt Romney will be the first paper in the recycle bin.
Anyway, it's one thing the newspaper still has over the Internet -- you can hold it, stuff it in drawer, pull it out years later and see everything going on in the world at a memorable moment.
Or you can just keep one page that tells one story. Sunday's Daily News will have a page made specially. A Kobe Bryant picture as big as his season.
About this blog
Kevin Modesti watches sports from a new angle since his promotion from sports columnist to sports editor for the Los Angeles Newspaper Group. In his new blog, Modesti not only comments on the big sports stories of the moment-- he talks about what makes them big. Think of it as a conversation with readers about how these stories should be covered.
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