Nostalgic "snailpapers" novelty song about print newspapers on YouTube now

For Danny Bloom, an aging baby boomer who grew up on
print newspapers and worked in the business for many years, writing a
song about the future of what he calls "snailpapers" -- as a term of
endearment -- comes naturally to him. A former reporter and editor for
several dailies and weeklies around the country and overseas as well,
the Boston-born Bloom says he wrote "I Just Can't Live (Without My
Snailpapers)" as an old-fashioned homage to the print newspapers of
yesteryear. It's on Youtube now, with J. Gale Kilgore of Big Spring,
Texas doing the vocals and arranging the melody.



"Dr Kilgore did a very nice job rendering the lyrics into a spoke song

kind of tune, and I love it," Bloom said. "His phrasing and his

understanding of the song give it a nice lift."



Bloom wrote the song, he says, to pay respect to the print media and

also to help protect and preserve print newspapers as well. He sees a

future with no print newspapers as no future at all. "We need print,

just as much as we need the Internet. Reading a real newspaper on real

newsprint should never vanish from our culture. My song is an attempt,

with humor and nostalgia, to put in a good word for that old

workhorse, the daily newspaper. Okay, I call them snailpapers in the

song, and that's because, as we all know, they arrive at our doorsteps

in the morning with news that is 12 hours old already. But I still

love my daily snailpaper, and I depend on it. So I am using the term,

snailpapers, as a term of endearment, not derision."



Bloom's song speaks about the old days of newspapering when "Woodward

and Bernstein" roamed the hallways of the Washington Post during the

Watergate era. He also mentions top Post editor Ben Bradlee and his

role in "taking Richard Nixon down". And of course, the New York Times

executive editor Bill Keller is praised as well for his knowledge of

the newspaper industry, both old media and new media, as the song

says, and columnists Maureen Dowd and David Brooks also make a brief

appearance in the song, too.



"For me, newspaper columnists play an important role in giving a voice

and a personality to any newspaper, so I put in the names of

Alex Beam at the Boston Globe and Neil Steinberg at the Chicago

Sun-Times as a way of showing my love and respect for those journeymen

reporters."



Bloom, who used to work at the old Washington Star and the old Los

Angeles Herald-Examiner gets in a nostalgic mention of the "Her-Ex",

as the newspaper was nicknamed in years gone by.



"The entire song is a trip down memory lane," Bloom says. "I hope the

song can play a small role in raising the morale of newspaper staffs

today nationwide, who live in an era of layoffs and closings. "I am on

the side of print newspapers, even as I embrace the Internet as well.

Sure, I twitter and use Facebook and have a blog and have a few email

accounts for business and pleasure. But as Dave Eggers says, there is

no reason that print newspapers and news websites cannot co-exist

together. It doesn't have to be an either-or world. Let's keep print

newspapers alive and let's use the Internet for all its wonder and

ease."



Bloom, who says he's an amateur songwriter only, learned to pen songs

by listening to professionals like Weird Al Yankovich and Randy

Newman. "My song is hardly in their league, but it's a novelty song,

too, and that's how I am promoting it. If it gets picked up and

covered one day by a professional singer, wonderful. But for now, I

have given it life on YouTube as a six-minute tune with scrolling

lyrics. It's cute!"





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnZKIk1Krp8

Steve Hall, editor at AdRants, a website about the adveritising

industry that also covers other media-related news, said Bloom's song

is trying "to save the

old-fashioned 'snailpaper.'"



For Dave Ellings, a retired newspaper reporter now living in New York, "the snailpaper song" works. He told Bloom

in a comment on YouTube: "I love this song, danny. The old newsman A. J. Liebling would love it -- it sports with

all the personality that the local press largely used to have, even

with the corruptions, too, of local owners. I love it more because it zings to the facts of personality that

buoyed all America's press -- even in the face of the corporate ooze.

And I love it most for the singing -- hommage to Arlo Guthrie, hommage

to all the folkies who kept America a decent place, back in those

days when it was still a republic."



SONG LINK with LYRICS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnZKIk1Krp8