A century ago, people got their news mostly by newspapers.

Well, you could sit around the general store all day, too. But reading the newspaper was faster.

A couple of decades later, radio news brought information as it happened. Our parents and grandparents got to hear about the bombings of London during World War II with the explosions plainly heard in the background.

A few years later, we could see the news happening through the magic of television, black and white, of course. TV coverage of the Kennedy assassination was a bit crude. Much of it was people sitting around a table, transcribing what someone on a telephone was telling them, or holding up still United Press International photos to the TV camera.

And that’s the way it was for decades.

My initial interest in newspapers came from riding my bicycle to downtown Conneaut as a kid to purchase comic books and newspapers at City News.

You could buy the Star Beacon, the News-Herald of Conneaut (since consolidated into one paper), two Erie newspapers (since consolidated into one,) the Youngstown Vindicator, the Plain Dealer and my favorite, the Cleveland Press.

The Press was always so big. I also liked the way the eyebrows looked like they were penciled in on the faces of people on wire photos. That’s because they were. Transmitting photographs at the time caused eyebrows to disappear so artists used pencils to put them back.

It was so sad when the Press died in 1982. It was also the first newspaper in the area committed to one color photo daily on the front page.

In the past couple of decades, expanded cable selections provided a lot more options for getting news.

We also have the Internet, with a buzillion news locations. In the past few years, another avenue for getting information has come up, cell phones. Yes, not only can you text people, take photographs, record videos, even make phone calls, but you can also get news updates.

No matter where you are, you can find out what Sarah Palin is saying, who Barack Obama is meeting with today, whether Britney Spears is going to court and for what reason.

The Internet can make you a journalist. You don’t even have to be a professional writer. Anybody can write a column like this, giving his or her opinion on various topics, offering reviews and tips, sharing a wealth of knowledge on any number of Internet sites. For the uninitiated, it is called blogging.

So with all of these avenues for getting information, where did people go on election night to get information on perhaps the most anticipated presidential race in many years?

It was back to television and newspapers.