Reluctance to New Literacies (or "Is it bad I want my diary back?")

I think about the tools and spaces of writing and literacy, especially on the first day of class. I always seem to have a new binder or clean sheets of paper.  I mean, that special first day of class newness always appealed to me.  I think I understand resistance to recognizing literacies because I remember how long it took me to get away from seeing a fresh document window in the same way I would view the first sheet of paper in an unused notebook.  This page and first post are not the start of a book that is bound and read with turned pages.  This first entry will be sent deeper down onto the page and even pushed onto a second page.  The first entry. The second page.  This still does not quite compute.

As for the idea of new literacies, I don't feel the same kind of connectedness to previously written books to be read because they already seem to be disconnected from their authors.  They are mass produced, not actually written in someone's hand, and simply convey the text.  Reading the same text in a book, online as a webpage, in graphic novel form with pictures, is still reading for me. 

Before someone points out that I'm speaking in constructs (in that book and text are unanimous, and that they serve as the conveyance of information), I suppose I should reexamine what I consider the definition and purpose of text in the age of "new" literacies.  As a reading specialist and teacher, I immediately hear the droning voice and the purpose of reading, which imply the purpose of writing, namely to entertain or to inform.  Is this "standard" my maxim only because it's never been questioned?  Perhaps before I try to wrap my mind around the purpose of reading, I should identify things to be read.  

As a reading teacher, I offer my students lists of "things to read" when demonstrating that reading is everywhere:

Subway ads

The ESPN Bottom Line

Cereal Boxes

Forms

Magazines

Tests and assignments

Comic books

Letters and notes

Email

Dictionaries, texts and references

Text messages

Nutrition facts

Medicine bottles

Clothing labels, tags, directions

I see which of these would be "new" literacy forms, and feel that I have been accepting of the promotion of these types of literacy, but I wonder if they require a distinct skill set that I have not encouraged in my instruction.  It's not simply the presentation of the form of literacy that is important.  It's equally important to provide a mean of accessing the literacy, which may go beyond the simple phonemic properties and textural structures which are the majority of what I've studied of literacy so far.