Print may be dying, but not at John Waters’ house. He says he gets six newspapers every day — The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Post, The New York Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today.

“And I’d get The New York Daily News if they every figured out how to deliver it. I hate reading on-line, especially after I’ve been writing at my computer. And since I live alone I’m reading at all times. I’m always reading when I eat.”

He still savors the tabloid charge of a New York Post headline such as the one that appeared after the demise of Ike Turner: “Ike Beat Tina to Death.” And he loves reading the editorials of people “I don’t agree with.” He enjoys the crime reporting in The Sun and feels the destiny of most newspapers is to become ferociously local. (“It’s really harder for Time or Newsweek: What do they have to become, The New Republic?”)

But he says you can’t resist the new digital age. “It’s like the coming of talkies. You have to re-invent yourself.”