The
original content of these front page formats of newspapers
is now out of date. Precisely rendered drawings have
replaced the text and pictures. Seemingly disconnected
from the newspaper's content, it is difficult to
place which part of the world these drawings are
taken from. Construction and demolition on building
sites might be the only theme in these drawings.
Construction and demolition is usually represented
in other kinds of columns, costings and estimates
columns used by most businesses. These represent
land, history, and activity far more accurately than
any map, blueprint, book, or statement so much so
that they could be seen as a complete representation
of the world parallel to the world where our bodies
live and create shadows etc. Are these drawings of
the places where action takes place, or as with costing
and estimates columns, is construction and demolition
the real action? Columns and picture squares of newspapers
are easily recognised universal systems. Even when
newspaper formats are used for something as unsuitable
as drawing these formats can still trigger shared
memories. We can still imagine and play back in our
heads some sort of news content to fit inside them.
Like this newspaper's new drawn in content, this
imagined news would certainly be formed from our
experience of reading many thousands of newspapers.
Like a parallel world of costings and estimates,
this sort of reading and "filling in" of
a newspaper format creates what could be called a
"parallel news world". TS Elliot, wrote about
reading a newspaper "he do the police in different
voices" he also wrote "So large a part of creation
is really criticism". Most of us can imagine a news
voice well enough, and even a place for a news event
to occur, but sometimes this can be indistinguishable
from real news especially when remembered or read as
an historical artefact.
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