I’m old fashioned, but lately have noticed much of my reading is done online. A click here and there and I have background info and an accompanying soundtrack. If I get bored I can take a porno break. I am still a fan of print and can’t imagine a world without paper but recognize the digital world is threatening.

A good friend, equally dedicated to print, made the leap. He bought a Kobo. For those not digitally inclined, a Kobo is an eBook reader. Instead of buying books made of paper and ink, a Kobo allows you to download books from Amazon or Indigo and read them on the six-inch screen.

“It holds up to 1,000 books,” he tells me.

I try to imagine how much space 1,000 books would take up on a shelf.

I would have never thought such a gadget would catch on. But there it is in the hands of a friend who loves books; now busy scrolling through pages on a device less than a half-inch thick.

Is the paper and ink book on the way out, like the eight-track player, beta video and female body hair? Is it old hat — going, going gone? Or will books hang on, surviving as an expensive novelty to satiate the appetites of folks who can’t change (I proudly include myself in this diminishing demographic).

I can’t imagine a world without books; then again, I thought we would always have newspapers. Look what has happened in that business.

Daily newspapers have been the hardest hit. Recently, The Nelson Daily News shut its doors. Small weekly community newspapers have been ravished and laid waste by the newspaper chains that continue to buy them. Black Community Newspapers, British Columbia’s largest community media company, bought the Nelson Daily News, specifically, to shut it down. All in an effort to provide elbow room for the Black owned, Nelson Star, a carbon copy of every other Black Community Newspaper.

Community newspapers have been turned into fast food chains that line the strip into town, serving up the same cheap shitty burger whether in Golden, Invermere, Cranbrook or Nelson.

Quality, witty, investigative journalism – gone. Replaced by business profiles. Fighting for the underdog – gone. Replaced by editors who write for advertisers and the Chamber of Commerce. Independence – gone. Replaced by publishers with backgrounds in real estate and tourism who think INK is an acronym for, I Never Knew.

When Mr. Cobb left the newspaper business in 2009 small community newspapers took a hit. He was the last of the old-time editors. The guy who knew all the issues, played hard and fair, but didn’t suffer fools lightly; who kept a bottle in the top drawer, was called every name in the book by all the top folks that have since been proven wrong and moved on. And he never stopped fighting for what was right regardless of how unpopular it was.

There is no place for such an editor in the print world. The mavericks are on the web.

The East Kootenay News Online Weekly is here without a dime of corporate money to prop it up or answer to. Independent and guaranteed to be interesting.

Mr. Cobb – good luck!

Bob Ede lives by Lake Windermere, thinks tourism has gotten out of hand and wonders why global warming hasn’t made the Huckleberries appear earlier. More of his writing and photos can be seen at: www.underswansea.wordpress.com. He can be reached at: [email protected].

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