At one time in my life, I was the newspaper industry's perfect customer.  20 years ago, on any given day, I'd purchased 2 newspapers myself, and often read a 3rd or 4th paper that I found at a restaurant or on a bus.  In 1990, the newspaper was the only place to get in-depth news about the world on a regular basis.

While in Canada, I regularly read The Calgary Sun, and the Calgary Herald (my two local papers), as well as the Globe and Mail.  When I worked in Africa, I regularly read  the International Herald-Tribune, the Times of London, and the Guardian of Nigeria, as well as the Globe and Mail whenever I got a chance.  In short, I was the perfect customer of the newspaper industry.

Today, 20 years later, I realized I haven't bought a newspaper in ages.  I can't actually remember the last time I bought a newspaper, though I still regularly read one if I go out to dinner alone and the restaurant happens to have one available.  20 years ago, I felt uninformed if I hadn't read my paper that day ... today, I barely notice if I haven't picked up a newspaper in a week or more.

But the real proof of the death of newspapers didn't come to me in the form of my reading habits.  While I used to feel uninformed without my daily dose of news, that is no longer the case.  With the internet, new sources of information are available for me, in a more easily consumable f0rm.  I am no less informed today, but I no longer need the newspaper to do that informing, so the truth is, I barely noticed I wasn't reading newspapers anymore.

Until recently that is.  After many years of living in the same place, I decided it was time for a move.  In the past few weeks, I have been slowly boxing up my life, and it's only been NOW that I've missed being a newspaper consumer.  I didn't miss the information newspapers used to be a vital source of ... what made me miss newspapers was the lack of convenient scrap paper for packing laying around my house.

I bought my first newspapers in months last week, but I didn't read them.  I bought them specifically for cheap, easy to use, scrap paper.  Much has been written recently about the indicators of decline in the newspaper industry, from economic, personal, and professional perspectives, and they've all been good.  But as the final proof, perhaps the most clear sign that newspapers are dead, I offer this final observation.  If someone like me, formerly the newspaper industry's perfect consumer, only notices the lack of newspapers in his life because of a lack of scrap paper cluttering his house, I seriously can't think of a worse indicator for the industry.