The shift to digital media consumption has left it’s print counterpart on its final legs, to meet an end that has come far too early. A pre-emptive RIP to print media. Soon to be gone too soon. A lot like the victim of a homicide who one detective will stop at nothing to find justice for.
The lead detective has made it his mission to find whoever killed a young waiter who happened to have the same name as his brother, killed 12 years ago. Incidentally, he never found the culprit. When asked if his obsession was related to the one case that he could never solve that happened to be closest to him, he replied, “Yeah, that’s how these things go.”
Now he needed to collect his thoughts and any detective worth their badge has a board with evidence, key documents, and most importantly – newspaper clippings pinned on it. And this is how the detective who could not save this victim, can finally save someone else. Or ‘something’ else. In this case – print media.
No one really “buys” newspapers anymore. They just happen to appear nearby sometimes. But this man needs real, physical copies. Words in print that say, “Man killed in park”, so that he can pin it up next to details of the aforementioned man. How else is he going to remember that yes, a man was indeed killed in a park? Or that his boss was ‘saddened’ by the whole situation?
Eventually one worker monitoring sales at each newspaper company noticed an increase in papers sold whenever they mention the murder. A new unspoken relationship blooms wherein editors sprinkle in as many related headlines as possible just to ensure at least one paper is sold, unbeknownst to them, to be clipped up and pinned with yarn connecting it to a picture of a battered elbow pad that was found on the scene. Are the two connected? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe we are all connected. Who is to say?
Of course, this has inevitably led to subsequent articles being increasingly less useful. Once they ran out of information that could have been used to either establish details or shed light on key figures, they delved into the history of the park where the murder took place, how many icepick related murders there have ever been, and other topics found at the bottom of the content-barrel. Regardless, it all goes on the board.
The detective has sworn that one day, he will find the killer. No matter how it long it takes, he will raise the bleeding carcass of a gutted industry if he has to, he will pin details on his bulletin board, and then hopefully solve the case. In that order.
The Ipe Collection 