Wasting Precious Pages
Monday, 29 December 2014 17:09![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dr_phil_physicsIn the last couple of decades, we been subject to dire warnings of the death of reading, the death of books, the death of printed books and traditional publishing, the death of journalism, the death of newspapers. As with most dire warnings, there are elements of truth and also realities which take a different course. We are an adaptable people.
Newspapers and good-old-fashioned journalism IS in a decline. Consolidation of papers so there are few two-newspaper towns anymore. Stripping down of newsrooms.
For us, the Grand Rapids Press has gone through several downsizings and reconfigurations, along with some offloading to the Mlive online site. Home delivery is only three times a week -- Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday -- though they actually produce a paper every day. This means that the comics are generally out of synch. M-Tu on Tuesday, W-Th on Thursday and Sunday-F-Sa on Sunday. People will post a Dilbert or a Get Fuzzy on Facebook, and we haven't seen it yet.
Twice they've tried to kill the weekly TV section. That failed miserably. TV Guide magazine is an acquired taste and I loathe it. The online guide requires a machine to be on -- easier now that we have Kindles -- and works dreadfully. And with only three days of home delivery, the daily TV listings are inadequate.
Parade magazine we have to hunt for every Sunday. It's gotten worse since they down-dimensioned it and it's gotten much thinner over the years, so it gets lost in the ad inserts.
But this rant is really about wasting paper.
Over the last four weeks, the big front page/picture on the TV section has been run twice. The first week I thought it was a printing error, so there were two sets of end sheets. The second week, I was surprised that their state of the art German presses were continuing to make the same error. Last Sunday, as I pulled off the extra layer for the third time in a row, I realized it wasn't a duplicate, but just the page 1 picture and three pages of ads, followed by a page 3 duplicate of page 1? Why in the world would you plan something like this? Why not just run the ads? Why create a situation where people are just going to throw away the outer sheet?
Dumb.
But this isn't the only wasted paper.
The Entertainment section in particular and the front page to some extent, have gone into this browser format. A tiling of stories within, it includes pictures and the start of the articles -- which are then repeated in their entirety on the pages within. You can't do the Continued on Page 3 subhead anymore? You've already cut the section sizes down and now you waste a whole page so it previews the articles?
I don't get it.
Perhaps the younger generation cannot grasp the technology of turning a page of a newspaper? That seems rather condescending. Perhaps people hate to change pages in the middle of a story? A legitimate issue, but then you just put a large headline index on part of page 1 highlighting the articles within. I hate reading two paragraphs and then rereading them inside or having to figure where to start. And duplicating the picture? See, if you run two pictures they oughta be different -- just saying.
Grouse, grouse, grouse.
I see this as laziness on the part of the newspaper. Wasting what little paper they give us for duplication.
Back in the old days...
Dr. Phil
Newspapers and good-old-fashioned journalism IS in a decline. Consolidation of papers so there are few two-newspaper towns anymore. Stripping down of newsrooms.
For us, the Grand Rapids Press has gone through several downsizings and reconfigurations, along with some offloading to the Mlive online site. Home delivery is only three times a week -- Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday -- though they actually produce a paper every day. This means that the comics are generally out of synch. M-Tu on Tuesday, W-Th on Thursday and Sunday-F-Sa on Sunday. People will post a Dilbert or a Get Fuzzy on Facebook, and we haven't seen it yet.
Twice they've tried to kill the weekly TV section. That failed miserably. TV Guide magazine is an acquired taste and I loathe it. The online guide requires a machine to be on -- easier now that we have Kindles -- and works dreadfully. And with only three days of home delivery, the daily TV listings are inadequate.
Parade magazine we have to hunt for every Sunday. It's gotten worse since they down-dimensioned it and it's gotten much thinner over the years, so it gets lost in the ad inserts.
But this rant is really about wasting paper.
Over the last four weeks, the big front page/picture on the TV section has been run twice. The first week I thought it was a printing error, so there were two sets of end sheets. The second week, I was surprised that their state of the art German presses were continuing to make the same error. Last Sunday, as I pulled off the extra layer for the third time in a row, I realized it wasn't a duplicate, but just the page 1 picture and three pages of ads, followed by a page 3 duplicate of page 1? Why in the world would you plan something like this? Why not just run the ads? Why create a situation where people are just going to throw away the outer sheet?
Dumb.
But this isn't the only wasted paper.
The Entertainment section in particular and the front page to some extent, have gone into this browser format. A tiling of stories within, it includes pictures and the start of the articles -- which are then repeated in their entirety on the pages within. You can't do the Continued on Page 3 subhead anymore? You've already cut the section sizes down and now you waste a whole page so it previews the articles?
I don't get it.
Perhaps the younger generation cannot grasp the technology of turning a page of a newspaper? That seems rather condescending. Perhaps people hate to change pages in the middle of a story? A legitimate issue, but then you just put a large headline index on part of page 1 highlighting the articles within. I hate reading two paragraphs and then rereading them inside or having to figure where to start. And duplicating the picture? See, if you run two pictures they oughta be different -- just saying.
Grouse, grouse, grouse.
I see this as laziness on the part of the newspaper. Wasting what little paper they give us for duplication.
Back in the old days...
Dr. Phil
