As I walked my Rockville neighborhood one recent morning, it wasn’t just birds and flowers I enjoyed in all their summer boldness. It was the number of newspapers I saw in my neighbors’ driveways. I realized I’m hardly the last of the die-hard readers of print news. I felt connected to my community as I thought about my neighbors and people all over the region who would soon open the same copy of the paper that I would.

We’d all take part in a ritual I started as a kid. My father and I shared the newspaper. He favored the front page and local news sections. Dad begged me to read them, but I wasn’t interested in serious news. Instead, I tore through the cartoons and the entertainment sections. It blew his mind when I became a community news reporter more than 20 years ago, and not only had to pay attention to hard news stories but report on them if I intended to earn a living.

When I started that job, my employer took me to the publishing plant, where I was awed by the people who run the printing presses. Those folks took enormous rolls of paper, ran it through the presses, and created folded papers at a rate of about 18 per second. I couldn’t believe how fast they moved. Next, the papers traveled across the enormous facility on a conveyor to where they were packaged for delivery. That’s probably why, especially since the pandemic, I came to deeply appreciate the delivery people who are essential to getting those stories onto doorsteps and driveways.

While I am no longer a full-time news reporter, my respect for the work of journalists, editors, and publishers has grown. That’s true especially as the industry continues to strain against advertising cuts that are directly tied to print editions. The move to digital has contributed to losses of jobs, publications, and news sections. It’s another reason I hold tight to my paper copies, my small attempt to support the industry.

Certainly, an argument can be made for the environmental costs of print news, even with recycling. I do my part to lower my carbon footprint, but I know it is larger as a result of my passion for newsprint. And while I accept that digital news is an essential means of reaching readers globally and I certainly get my share of information online, my paper edition is as valuable to me as books and magazines, but with the bonus of getting to tear out cartoons for my husband.

Finally, I propose a modest challenge for anyone who only gets their news digitally: pick up a print copy or go to the library to read one. Perhaps you’ll also develop a romance with newsprint, or at least understand why so many of us are devoted to our home delivery subscriptions. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to enjoy the sense of community I feel whenever I see someone in public transit or at a coffee shop, flipping through the same copy of the paper that I’m carrying under my arm.

Laura Sturza (laurasturza.com) is writer living in Rockville.