Yesterday morning I sat on a train at Alewife as it idled for 3-4 minutes before commencing its run down the Red Line. Totally engrossed in the New York Times‘ coverage of Bernie Madoff’s 150-year prison sentence, I barely noticed the tall, broad-shouldered man in a blue suit sit next to me until I saw him pull a folded Wall Street Journal out of his briefcase.
I glanced at his newspaper and he glanced at mine. Despite our evident ideological differences, there is an unspoken respect between commuters who read real newspapers (as opposed to the free Metro newspapers that hired derelicts distribute near the turnstiles, which provide news in primary-school-level factoids that make USA Today look hard-hitting.) We’re rare. Maybe once a week I’ll sit near a man (almost always a man) who is reading a NYTimes, a WSJ, or a Boston Globe. We’ll appraise each other, like we’re members of an exclusive, learned society that could be called People Who Give Shit about What’s Happening in the World.
[Theoretically, reading a newspaper is no better than reading news online, but in practice, people who read news online can click the articles they want to read, and it’s human nature to crave soft news about how a 2-year was strangled by a pet python or if Michael Jackson’s ex-wife will fight for custody. People who read reputable newspapers will turn a page and find an article about how China is lending Zimbabwe millions of dollars to prop up its dismal economy or an editorial analyzing Obama’s health care plan. It’s not fun to read, but it’s what’s in front of you.]
So the man in the business suit gestures at the Bernie Madoff headline on my New York Times. “150 years!” he says.
“It’s incredible, isn’t it? I mean the whole thing is just…”
“Incredible,” he finished.
And over the course of our 25-minute train ride to downtown Boston, the man in the suit and I had a wonderful conversation that started with a gushy rehash of the incredible Madoff scandal, continued to the discovery that we live 3 streets away from each other, delved briefly into politics before quickly swerving to our respective professions. He said that his company might have a future need for a technical writer, so he gave me his business card. I wasn’t surprised he was in finance, but I was sort of awed that he was a Vice President at one of the most prestigious investment banks in America.
That’s the cool thing about this random encounter with a fellow newspaper reader on the subway. Had I known when we began talking that he was a VP at a prestigious investment bank, I would have been completely tongue-tied and awkward even though I’ve been avidly reading about Bernie Madoff in the newspaper for months. As it was, I held my own in the conversation and it was effortless. Thank you, New York Times, for the knowledge you have bestowed upon me, and the good impression you have helped me to forge.
