I read several newspapers a day online. For getting the information and understanding it, nothing beats the net. I usually start with SFGate, the San Francisco Chronicle site, then OpinionJournal.com, the Wall Street Journal site. Finally, I end up at the ER. I scan the headlines, drill down into the stories that pique my interest, move on to the letters and Op Ed. Then to the blogs, to read Lon and Dan and Fred. Free-floating bloviation? You're soaking in it.

But then I also take a midmorning break to get a bagel and a cup of coffee at Brooklyn Bridge, and while the winsomely wholesome but defiantly decadent coed toasts my bagel as I wait, I take advantage of those few minutes to peruse the dead tree version of the daily fishwrap. I confess it's the Sacramento Bee. They've got the best comics page in the Pacific time zone, ahead of the Mercury News by a nose.

Frankly, it's mostly about the funnies. I know I can find most any syndicated strip on the web, but it's much more satisfying to methodically work my way down the comic pages, skipping the Family Circus and Mark Trail, but always lingering over Doonesbury and Dilbert, Luann and Zits (ever notice they have the same parents?), For Better or Worse and Rose is Rose. They don't even have to be funny; just familiar.

I'm not all that fond of the Bee's political cartoons, but I still check them out. That's the thing you really can't find online anywhere. Used to be that every daily of any decent size had its own in-house political cartoonist, but it's a dying breed. Most papers subscribe to a syndication service. Still, the political cartoon is one of the few reasons to pick up or look at a conventional newspaper. And it's important that people still do so. Not for the usual justification of a well-informed electorate; but because it's discrete, serial, and the closest any community has to a "public record".

I suppose I'm old school. My dad was a newspaperman, and I grew up hanging out in the offices of a small-town daily. I don't think the hard-copy dog trainer is all that relevant in the Blog Age, but it's mental meatloaf, comfort food for the mind.