It Seems to be a Paper Week, One of the Last

I did a paragraph within the last week about maybe not re-upping for the Sunday AJC.

The last post was about phone books and the fact that they are outdated other than for leveling seriously caddy-whompous tables, getting a bail bond, a hooker or the power company during a power outage.

So today, I got up as usual, got some coffee and arranged the paper, the “paper” paper, into its component parts – roughly ¾’s ads and coupons and ¼ article sections (composed of roughly 2/3’s articles and 1/3 ads). Since I didn’t have a lot of time to get to the golf course, I skipped the normal reading order and didn’t get to “@issue,” the AJC’s Sunday opinion section until after golf, at lunch.

@issue, is going out of business after today, the two senior editorial writers informed me in “A note about our new pages.” Cutting through the propaganda, here’s what they said and didn’t say.

The “new pages” are fewer than the current pages. Daily, the AJC prints two pages of editorial content, one local and one national, and a page of letters to the editor/other editorial content. These fifteen pages a week will be cut to ten, “the norm across the newspaper industry.” Interesting word that industry.

The current Saturday paper has only one editorial page “Saturday Talk,” two-thirds letters and the rest an apologia from the paper’s ombudslady. It is now going to be called “Community Voices.” Maybe we’ll get rid of the apologies.

Why is a major city newspaper killing its Sunday opinion section? It isn’t the paper, it’s us: “With time-starved readers demanding a simplified and more easily navigable newspaper – and newsprint costs soaring – we have decided to discontinue the [section].”

What focus group did I miss?

“I’m time-starved and stupid. I can’t find the third section of the Sunday paper.”

“You are? You can’t? We’ll just cut the content and move it to the end of the Section A. Can you find that?”

“Well maybe, I’ll try. At least I’ve got all day Sunday to look for it.”

So newsprint is up. Exxon-Mobil makes something like a 10% profit. The newspaper “industry” makes northward of 20%.

What’s left of the Sunday AJC? The page with advice to the lovelorn, teenagers, etc. The page with sewing tips, genealogy and pet news and sports memorabilia price. The page and a half of wedding announcements. A lot of AP stories and easy to navigate, simple local reporting.

Seems I don’t have much of a reason to read the Sunday “paper” paper other than the pleasure of the feel of now very expensive newsprint. I just have to make sure to not spill the coffee on the keyboard, it’s less forgiving than paper.