At the breakfast table, she fires questions at me: Did the Phillies win? Did the Mets win? How big is our lead? Who do we play next? When? What time? Who's pitching? Check the paper, I tell her. And so she walks over to the small desk where we put each morning's issue of the Inquirer, pulls out the sports section, and begins spreading it apart next to her bowl of oatmeal. Watching my 7-year-old delve in with such enthusiasm warms this writer's heart, for it is something I did at her age--and something I still do today. She tells me what she sees: who beat whom by inflated scores, where the Phils sit in the standings, how terrific the Dodgers are doing and how awful the Nationals are. I've begun explaining box scores to her. One of these days she'll discover other sections, as I did, and perhaps then her perusal of headlines and bylines and stories and sidebars will evolve from mere information gathering to an anticipated, leisurely, daily ritual. One wonders, of course, what shape the paper will be in if and when that shift happens, but for now I will continue to stoke her interest and pray that print journalism somehow figures it out before it's too late. | PRS