I’ve had a love affair with newspapers almost since the day I was born.
       Maybe that had to do with the fact that, as a baby, I was the main subject of my father’s weekly column in a little newspaper in Iowa called the Traer Star-Clipper. Or maybe it was that early photo of me on the family throne reading the newspaper (just like my dad) at age 2.
        Whatever the imprint, my three kids never got it. Newspapers to them are as foreign as video games are to me. It makes me sad because they don’t know what they’re missing – the drama of the world told in in-depth stories and photos on a daily basis.
       As a result, the newspaper industry seems to be under a death knell, with my ilk – golf writers – becoming an endangered species. In the past year, 25 major newspapers (that I know of) have eliminated their ink-stained golf scribes in places like Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles. And, yes, right here in the East Valley.
       Last week on www.golfobserver.com, the only Internet site that features many of the top stories in golf on a daily basis, Sal Johnson, one of  the game’s leading statisticians and historians, penned an article entitled “The Death of the Newspaper Golf Writer.’’