In computer science there is something called the Turing test. I do not claim to understand it but I think it goes as follows: "If journalism and the output of a computer program cannot be distinguished, and neither journalists nor programmers are embarrassed by this, then mission accomplished." Nevertheless I have fond memories of reading newspapers and magazines.

Nowadays I hardly think about them because I hardly see them. On my morning bicycle ride I pass one (1) house that often has a bagged newspaper lying at the foot of its driveway. It's probably the Austin American-Statesman and believe it or not, I have fond memories of reading that. (And of writing letters to it.) But I am not about to subscribe to it, or to anything. What I treasure is a good long Latin American periodical over a good slow open-air tropical breakfast.

Which is harder to arrange than you might think. Come to think of it myself, I can recall only two times I enjoyed what I have just described: in 1997, a magazine on a seventh-floor terrace in Manaus, and in 2015, a newspaper on an interior patio in San Salvador. Both times, I made the pots of coffee last.

It should flatter journalists that I can remember this sort of thing. Their product is perishable, and they know it, and there is no reason they should be embarrassed by it. The product's effect is likewise short-lived. I cannot and should not remember what I read. (Although I did write down a bit one of the times.) What rightly endures is the feel of the physical experience. The humidity high but cool, the sun reasserting itself, distant street noise too, the weight of the paper in my hands, the very density of knowledge apprehended slowly and in comfort. You cannot be in Manaus or San Salvador without picking up a lot. Only by happenstance – I stayed in the wrong hotels? – did I not pick up as much in Caracas or Bel้m or Recife or Rio or quite a lot of other cities. They all have newspapers!

Oh, I think I understand why. Most mornings on most trips, I am in a hurry. Well, I wasn't in Manaus or San Salvador – not many things to rush to in those cities. For that matter, most mornings just before working, I was in a hurry as well. But I am not now. And Texas can be fairly tropical. But I am not paying U.S. journalism a penny, if its human product is no more sophisticated than that of a sentient dot-matrix printer spilling fanfold paper.

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Some years ago I read a book titled The Breakfast War. It, the war, was not called that by the combatants. It may have been called that by the folks in England who read about it every morning. Even if they didn't call it that, they thought of it as such, because – said the author – it had become quite the custom to follow the affair in newspapers, which for some reason were doing a fine job covering it. It seems to me that if British reporters could do that for the Russo-Turkish War in 1877, they could also have done it for the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, and maybe they did. But the earlier was mostly in France while the later was mostly in Bulgaria, and maybe that's just the ideal distance for storytelling. The wars lasted about the same length, and in both the peak crisis was a siege. UT Austin is reopening, and if I take more courses there, I will have to go there: I might, while I am there, go to the library and look at the book again.

Nothing like this was going on in Brazil or El Salvador. Pretty impressive for Latin America, don't you think? And yet there was still plenty to read about. Maybe Latin America is, politically, and minus some dumb stuff, a pretty mature place. Robots can't cover it.

(7/20/21)