Authors Electric

Eric M. Knight and friend on MGM lot, 1942 They say now, that we humans coevolved with dogs over the past 30,000 or so years, rather than our prehistoric ancestors simply domesticating hapless wolves like sheep. Each changed the other. Though much remains vague, socioanthropologists theorize that certain Asian and European wolves chose us as handy sources of scraps. This suggests that humans were as messy then as they are now. Wolves who danced with humans morphed towards friendlier dogs in a symbiotic relationship that made humans more efficient apex hunters, which led to heartier nutrition supporting expanded tribal encampments. These, in turn, led to settlement, cultivation, agriculture and eventually to civilization in which dogs perform so many essential jobs beyond their central roles as family members and all around pals. My childhood experiences with Canis Lupus Familiaris leads me to speculate that a parallel process may apply in the uneven, ever unfolding evo...

Those were the days, my friend. We thought they'd never end, when printing was industrial and newspapers weren't media because we never heard the word used that way. Editors chomped on cigars. Reporters rat-tat-tat-tatted on their Remingtons and Underwoods, cigarettes dangling from their lips, their white shirts open-collared and striped tie loosened. They'd yell, “boy!” when they ran out of copy paper, or were on a deadline and needed me to run their their hot sheets up to the city desk as they typed furiously. Teletype machines clattered incessantly in the glass-walled wire room – AP, UPI, Reuters, INS – spitting out news of the world by the ream. The copy boy – me – had to step lively to keep up. Armed with a straight-edged length of leading, I would tear off stories as the machines inched them out relentlessly – short and long – and sort them quickly – local, state, national, international – each destined for the wire basket of their respective editors, No. 2 p...

Last night I picked the final piece of paper from my newly emptied attic floor and placed it in Box 16 of 22 (labelled Amalgamated Press serials 1931-1935, print and manuscript, since you ask). I turned the page and this was how the story began. WOMEN WORSHIPPED HIM! MEN ADMIRED AND ENVIED HIM! WHO WAS THIS HANDSOME STRANGER WHO CAPTURED ALL HEARTS? Well, the answer to that question was not Herbert Allingham – the author of The Spell of a Rogue and about 300 other magazine serial stories. The issue of The Oracle  that I was packing away was published in March 1934 when Allingham was approaching the end of his fifty year working life.  Less than two years later Allingham would be dead but neither The Oracle  nor any of the other cheap papers would mention the fact – let alone pay tribute to his lifetime of work. The first instalment of Allingham's first serial story had been published in 1886, the last would be completed posthumously in 1937. Allingham...

This? Or this? I love my Kindle and - because I spend a lot of time out of the United Kingdom - I often read newspapers on it.  I can download today’s Guardian (99p) while having breakfast in the piazza, looking smugly at the two-day-old papers (3 euros each) hanging on the rack outside the Tabacchi next door. It’s great! Sales of actual newspapers are sinking.  There’s been a 25% decline since 2007 and the evidence is that the fall is accelerating.   Lots of reasons for this - but computers, E-readers and I-pads are the main culprits.   It's not just that it's easier and more convenient to read a newspaper on an electronic device, they're also altering the way we consume information.  You can access live news on an E-reader too. Why read news that’s at least 12 hours old when you can stream instant bulletins of breaking news minute by minute? Newspapers are dying every week without us even being aware of their demise and it seem...