Doomsday pundits predict we will soon attend the funeral service of the Newspaper:

Dearly beloved we have all gathered round this grave to lay to rest someone who has been with us for well over two centuries. During this rather long life that our friend enjoyed in our midst, he not only educated but entertained with his daily comic strips and cartoons, and of course informed us with reverberating, earth shattering revelations. He came in the morning before most of you were awake, lay on your doorstep, waiting for you to stoop and gasp with surprise over the immensity of whatever he had to reveal that day.

Of course there were days when he had nothing to shock, when he allowed your eyes to wander and relax over nude and semi nude pictures he so generously titillated you with. Those were the days when the rustling wind also rustled through its pages and left you relaxed and rejuvenated.

But today our friend is dead, and we have all gathered here to pay our last respects to someone we cherished every morning along with our bed coffee.

Now before we deliver his body to the ground is there anything anyone else would like to say.

“Yes!”

“And what sir do you want to say about our dead friend the Newspaper.

“That he is not dead!”

“Ah sir you mock all of us who have gathered here to bury him. You mock also our dear friend who lies dead!”

“He is not dead!”

“Are you a doctor sir?”

“Yes and No!”

“You cannot be both sir! Either you are a doctor or you are not! Either you can certify him dead or you cannot!”

“I am a doctor of research, not a medical one, I have done research on our friend here, you so quickly want to bury, may I ask you your name?”

“I am known as WWW!”

“Yes of course! You are the World Wide Web! And wouldn’t it be convenient for you to see the Newspaper buried!”

“You offend me sir!”

“If I have, I am sorry, but Mr WWW, let me tell you, it will be a long while before my friend the Newspaper dies. You my friend may offer your reader instant gratification by getting him specific information in a jiffy, but..”

“What?”

“In a newspaper it is not the information I seek that I read, but it is pages spread out with headlines and information opening themselves and offering themselves to me, saying take, read and I look and choose after seeing the spread offered to me. You sir, cannot offer me the spread at one time which yonder Newspaper you have tried to throw in the grave offers! Look!”

“What is it?”

“He moves, he is alive, look he kicks the lid of the coffin you tried to nail on him. Ah arise my dear Newspaper, come out and be with us, you have lived a hundred years, nay two, and you will live another hundred, nay ten..!”