This week Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun Times gave us the greatest definition of a newspaper I have ever read:
“The Chicago Sun Times is a newspaper,” I continued, improvising. “It’s like a website, but folded and thrown at people’s houses.”
The Sun Times is going down the toilet quickly! They just let go ¼ of their editorial staff last week, including the photographers that they hired back after the debacle of firing their whole photo staff last year. It does make it easier to read the paper these days, though. There are only about 20 pages of semi-useful stuff, after you take away the want ads and the obits, so it can be read in about 5 minutes. It has kind of turned into a large format comic book, except on lousy paper. Every morning, I walk to the corner and put $1.00 in the box and bring the paper home, for reasons I can’t explain. Maybe just a bad habit, I suppose?
Meanwhile, Newsweek, which gave up printed copies about 2 years ago, but returned to the printed page about 6 months ago, seems to be publishing an issue every four days or so! Seems that one appears in my mailbox almost every other day!! The photography is great, and the writing is getting better, but it is still not up to the level of where it was even 5 years ago. Oh well, guess we can hope!!
At least Time still rules the market, with a great issue every week