Newspaper Follies
Just getting around to posting these tidbits from Friday’s LA Times because I was in Las Vegas all weekend and I didn’t take my computer with me. I was afraid it would get in the way of my gambling and whore mongering. Just kidding, it probably would have been very helpful with my gambling and whore mongering. But so here was the cover of the LA Times on Friday:
Right, it was an ad. An ad masquerading as the front page of a newspaper. Which, okay, whatever, newspapers are broke. Fine, make every page an ad. I can’t tell you the last time I read insightful reporting in the LA Times, anyway. I wish the ad in question didn’t feature that awful picture of Johnny Depp, because there are few things more disturbing to me than his hair and makeup choices as the Mad Hatter. I don’t like to look at it one bit, particularly when I’m drinking my morning coffee and on my way to Vegas to gamble and whore monger.
But that isn’t what really bothered me about the whole affair. What really bothered me is this. Enhance.
What? Who’s taking the reins on health care, now?
So that no one would confuse it with actual news, the editors of the LA Times removed every word that people might have accidentally confused with information. They couldn’t even be bothered to replace the copy with something entertaining. They just took out the nouns and said, “to Hell with it.” I’m fine with covering the front page of a newspaper with advertising. What I’m not fine with is doing so lazily. The ultimate irony is that no one blinked an eye about the fake articles being completely unreadable, because no one actually reads the newspaper. Front page fail. (more…)
