esrosedotblog

TIMESLESS

We took the plunge yesterday.

I canceled the LA Times. The dead tree, home delivered version.

We have been getting it since we came out here.

It was a wonderful paper.

Now, not so much.

They began to slim it down a couple of years ago. Maybe longer.

First the great magazine went to monthly then disappeared entirely.

The sections got remixed so that real estate all but disappeared in business.

The California coverage, which actually increased for the better, was crunched into the main section right after the first and second pages.

Then national coverage shrank to nil. I hardly read it.

The Sunday paper was/is a joke. I read less than the daily. Filled with stuff about fashion and "image" and even the business section is a pr hash printed earlier in the week.

The Entertainment section is not. Film reviews, unaccountably, have been relegated to mostly inside the section and have been cut in half. Most of it is profile stuff, puffery. Hackdom.

Over recent months the paper has drifted towards a kind of snarky nastiness in its headlines. Rarely reflecting the real story. In addition, outright opinion masking as journalism has been appearing more regularly from Washington. Some of this against the Obama Administration but more often towards the kind of nasty cynicism about all of DC that you can find on any left or right wing blog.

So enough is enough.

They want to know the reason you are discontinuing when you do it.

I tried.

I could hear her typing. From her comments it was not unusual.

I hear that if you are cutting it for budgetary reasons they will cut the price for you. Sleazy.

Anyway it is gone.

I am behind on my reading of the New Yorker. I guess I will catch up now. Also the New York Times Book Review which we get in hard copy.

The NYT has actually begun special sections for the west coast. LA area. So I get that on line. Localized.

They are going to kick the LAT ass.

So, some sad withdrawal today.

Labels: nostalgia