As much as I enjoy visiting New Orleans, I’m glad I don’t live there, because I’m a creature of inflexible morning habit. If my day doesn’t start with a glass of unsweetened grapefruit juice, a cup of coffee and a morning newspaper, I’m grumpy. Or grumpier.

And while New Orleans probably still has plenty of unsweetened grapefruit juice and coffee, starting this fall it no longer will offer a daily newspaper.

Following in the cost-cutting footsteps of several other newspapers — and leading the way for others — The Times-Picayune has announced it will be available in print only on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. On the other four days, New Orleanians will have to go the paper’s website.

This is not the worst thing that ever happened to the Big Easy. And, thanks to the Internet, we’re all more informed than we ever wanted to be. But, for us creatures of habit, there’s something about holding a newspaper in our hands and skimming from the front-page headlines to the back-page comics that’s infinitely more satisfying than scrolling up and down a screen.

With a few taps on a keyboard, I no longer have to wait until tomorrow to find out how badly by favorite baseball team lost 20 minutes ago. But seeing the box score in print makes it seem more official, somehow.

Most of my friends feel the same. But then, most of my friends are my age. None of my children, on the other hand, has newspapers lying around on their coffee tables.

When I visit my son in Washington, the world’s epicenter of significant news, there is no Washington Post on the doorstep in the morning. To find out what’s going on in the world, I have to turn to the television. Assuming my grandchildren aren’t parked in front of it watching “SpongeBob SquarePants.” Or I could fire up the computer, assuming my son isn’t checking his e-mail or my daughter-in-law isn’t scanning Facebook. There’s always my iPhone, but reading a lengthy story in tiny little print on a tiny little screen is more trouble than it’s worth.

As disappointing as it may be for us newspaper addicts, The Times-Picayune’s announcement merely is one more inevitable step in journalistic evolution. Boys lugging canvas bags filled with rolled up newspapers have pretty much become extinct. Newspaper drives have stopped raising money. It’s been years since I’ve heard newspapers referred to as “bird cage liners,” although maybe that’s because not that many people have birds these days.

So if I do get the opportunity to visit New Orleans again, the absence of a daily newspaper there won’t keep me from going. I’ll just schedule the trip for Wednesday, Friday or Sunday.

Contact this columnist at dlstew_2000@yahoo.com.