It is natural for things to change: additions and subtractions that will one day stand on the final balance sheet of what we have gained and lost. So many things that are becoming obsolete, passions and talents that the world seems to no longer need. In the old winery in Freyburg, a huge oak barrel has been preserved as an altar on which Red Riding Hood’s champagne (Rotkäppchen) fermented, into whose dark whale belly apprentices entered with a candle in hand to clean it. Likewise, the Print Museum in Leipzig today is a mausoleum dedicated to these beautiful mammoths, from whose jaws emerged fresh what the world wanted to say and share. Ghosts of spellers wandering around, dexterous fingers connecting and arranging the letters that made up the words on the other side of the mirror.

We nostalgics live half-heartedly in love with the past. We remember, or imagine we remember, those cafes where people went to read newspapers from all over the world. We behave like shipwrecks of the rituals that have given shape and meaning to life for centuries: sitting down to drink coffee and eat the daily newspaper for breakfast, we lift each page as if peeling an orange that leaves the yolks stained with fresh ink. The news was better digested when the messenger accompanied us with his smells and sounds, along with the solid presence of objects that persist in space. Then, of course, piles of newspapers piled up at the bottom of the stairs. In my grandparents’ house in Quito there were three: SVEMIR, the market and Today. They died one by one. Today it has survived only in its original form, the soul of ink and paper, this one, the first. My love of print was born and raised in my grandparents’ house where I learned about comics and crossword puzzles from the Sunday magazines. Later, I liked the columnists, especially those who opened my eyes to a different way of seeing the world. I had breakfast with Pájar Febres Cordero every Sunday while I was studying communications.

On June 30, 2023, the last printed edition of the Wiener Zeitung, the oldest newspaper in Europe, came out…

June 30, 2023, the last printed copy of the legendary Wiener Zeitung, the oldest newspaper in Europe, first printed in Vienna in 1703. Those among us who still cannot imagine a world without this subject are sad, those who believe that the advantages of online journalism (perspective, speed, democracy), saving ink and paper) do not outweigh its disadvantages. If they did, the world wouldn’t be so confused, drowning in a tide of fake news, unable to digest the amount of “information” our screens are saturated with. Now that anyone with a device can report and give their opinion, professional journalists must redouble our efforts creating top quality content. But readers have become accustomed to something that would have been absurd before: the free consumption of texts that are the product of other people’s work. No one is looking for free bread, but we are used to finding everything on screens, without paying, or at least we think so, because the bill this trend lays on us can already be seen in the political decisions of the majority. And it’s about an invoice with too high a price… (OR)