Newspaperin'

I should be happy the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has cut its delivery to Northwest Georgia. It'll probably result in more sales of The Daily Citizen.
But the newspaper-loving side of me isn't so thrilled.
I grew up reading three newspapers: The Summerville News, a weekly owned by my family; the Chattanooga Times (our morning paper) and the Atlanta Journal, which usually arrived just as I got home from school.
I read the Times -- at least the sports section -- in the bathroom and at the breakfast table before school and I read the Journal as soon as it arrived in the afternoon. (I had to read both papers carefully because my older brother and father also read them and neither wanted a ruffled copy of the Journal when they got home.)
Sports and comics (loved that Wizard of Id) were my first interests but slowly I began to branch out into other parts of the newspaper, eventually becoming a cover-to-cover reader.
I was unhappy when the Journal and Constitution melded and furious when the afternoon paper -- my favorite -- was put down like an old dog.
Now, for all intents and purposes, the morning paper has disappeared as well.
And don't tell me reading it on the Internet is the same thing. I like Internet newspapering and the potential it holds, but dagnabit when a man sits down at the Waffle House and orders a bowl of that good chili he should be able to read a copy of his home state's leading newspaper.
I shared this complaint this morning at The Cracker Barrel with a compadre -- let's call him Rueful Roger -- who lamented the absence of the AJC from local news racks.
An era has passed in Georgia and right now it's hard to see how we're better off for the change.