Newspapers in Coffee Shops

When it comes to haunting coffee shops, I may be due some kind of award.

I sit, sometimes for ages, as if I pay utilities.

I drink like someone nursing a warm beer bought with their last twenty bucks and all hell waiting at home.

I also read the newspaper, which I buy and bring in myself, from cover to cover.

It’s that last bit that grabs the attention of a newspaper-free coffee shop manager who watches me regularly forego doomscrolling on my mobile phone to despair over the sorry state of things in print.

Like a technophobe drowning in a digital world, I sip my coffee and turn the paper’s rustling pages with an almost religious reverence before handing my copy to the staff to enjoy.

As printed newspapers go the way of video and the radio star, the action is greeted with thanks, curiousity and surprise and, the next day, I return to see a newspaper, including the one I contribute to, on every table.

Jokingly, I ask: “Was that me?”

And a staffer smiles and says: “Yeah!”

To me, free-to-read newspapers on a coffee shop table are one of life’s sweetest delights. They invite you to stay a while. They encourage you to learn a little more about the world, and they show you the wonders and warnings of a planet, the entirety of which you are unlikely to ever see.

For people who enjoy their cortados, dry cappuccinos or espressos alone, a newspaper is the most multifaceted and illuminating company that never runs out of informative, exciting, dramatic, celebratory, poignant or proud stories to tell.

While the news section is often regarded as a newspaper’s shining star created by fearless journalists uncovering corruption, speaking truth to power, documenting social ills and highlighting human rights abuses, the best newspapers have stories about everything for everyone.

Whether you’re interested in finance, farming, sport, history, health and wellness, or just want to know the price of eggs at a popular supermarket chain, good local newspapers have an article, advertisement or insert that will interest and educate you in a way that is relevant to your local reality.

These realities are further discussed in opinion pieces, columns, letters to the editor as well as text messages from readers who are invited to have their say, often with no holds barred and sometimes with black humour enough to take the edge off the awful.

Beyond the hard and breaking news section, you may find news of the wider world which can be as ugly as it can be uplifting.

Stories about war, conflict, genocide, starvation, new technology, medical advancements, agricultural innovation, psychology and the changing shape of society can all offer insight into where the human race is, where we’re heading, and what we can do to stop it, catch up or harness developments to enrich and improve our own communities.

Deeper into a newspaper’s depths, the arts and entertainment section is the bringer of poetry, music, food, travel, visual art, theatre, cinema and light.

Presented in a more casual and conversational tone, this section is a gig guide, the home of artist profiles, a store of tales of achievement, new releases, methodology and craft and a section in which to live vicariously through write-ups, critiques and reviews should you be unable to access events or travel the globe.

When you see someone sitting still, engrossed in a newspaper at a coffee shop, all this is at their fingertips.

A treasure of knowledge, entertainment and education that is refreshed almost every day of the year (bar public holidays and a week or two around Christmas), read old-school and with a little ceremony.

In honour of all the coffee shops that still buy newspapers every day and offer them to patrons, I write this column and raise my cortado.

The world can often feel short on good things, but you are certainly one of them.

– martha@namibian.com.na; Martha Mukaiwa on Twitter and Instagram; marthamukaiwa.com