Monday, November 17, 2008
HARD COPY
We are in conflict over the LATimes.
I don't mean with each other. I mean inside ourselves.
The Times has reduced itself to a shadow of its former eminence.
When we moved here, 11 years ago, it was a grand improvement on our old local paper The Boston Globe. It was generally thought to be in the running as one of the nation's top three papers along with the New York and Washinton.
I haven't seen the Boston paper lately but the Times is sure not a great paper any more.
It was bought by the Tribune Company and then bought again by the weasel Sam Zell.
It has lost its weekly magazine, the book section, the opinion section, the auto section (which had the Pulitzer winning Dan Neill in charge) and many columns. I forget how many columns of news they have dropped. Equivalent to several pages I think. Maybe more.
At the same time, they have added two PR-centric sections. One deals with "image" and the other panders to the film industry. Vapid. Empty. Obvious sops to advertisers.
It has not, in this period, done anything to develop its on line version. The whole enterprise is on the wane. Dying.
Of course, that is the story of newspapers country wide.
I now get most of my news online. Magazines are no longer an information source for me.
Now, the newspaper is becoming a second source at the same time it is becoming second rate.
So we are thinking of ditching it. But, as I say, we are conflicted.
The first issue was the comics. You can almost duplicate the comic section by going to the Washington Post on line. But not quite. There are three that have to be found on different sites.
Then, there are some of the columns. I read at least three guys regularly. What about that? They are on line but I know that I will not read, I will skim. That is my on line reading style.
And finally, there is the hold-in-the-hand feature.
I have been reading a newspaper since before I went to grade school. I have had a paper in the morning all my life. Sometimes two.
This is major.
And then, this morning, the Times was as good as it used to be. Lots of local news, snappy and interesting. A health section that was quite informative (I know I would not search through the health section on line) and so on and on.
It was almost as though they had heard us talking and decided to give us a touch of quality today.
But there is the waste problem. Look at all the trees I am using to read the news every day.
And lets get down to the basic basics here. It now costs over 600 dollars a year to get the paper delivered to our house every day.
As I type, the market is down 134.00 (the Dow).
These are hard times. We have to tighten our belt.
Shit.
We can't even cut one thing that has a single high price tag. How will we cut down on groceries and other 'basics'.
I don't know.
Maybe the paper has some hints at how to tighten up the budget. Let me go see.
