I’ve been a New Yorker subscriber for 50 years. For the first 20 years, I read it cover-to-cover every week. Sometimes that was a difficult task. When my mother heard about it, she said “No one’s paying you to read it,” so I stopped.

It suddenly occurred to me recently that for the five years after I graduated from MIT, I was paid to read the paper. AP and UPI obviously required the local papers to be scoured for news items. At Bank of America I was in the PR department, and was assigned to read the San Francisco Examiner every day from first page to last. At the Oregon Journal it was required that we read the Oregonian cover-to-cover every day. In addition, it was strongly advised that we read a few out-of-town papers from elsewhere in Oregon, looking for uncovered news.

Then in 1979 I joined the trade press fraternity, where we were encouraged to read the local newspapers, but only the front page and the business section―looking for Silicon Valley news.

I enjoyed being paid to read the newspaper and sometimes I miss it, even the Hartford Courant.