It is so true of our local paper, the Richmond-Times Dispatch! It is dumbed down every quarter, it seems! Now it's like a Teen Beat magazine with little 2-phrase articlettes and a commentator who's byline is "Whatever!" All she talks about is what kind of shoes she wears with her favorite miniskirt, her family's crazy Thanksgiving, me me me me me.

It's horrible. I buy the paper with less and less frequency, and when I want real news I get the Washington Post or the New York Times.

No discussion of the falling trajectory of daily newspapers can be complete without pointing out that for more than 30 years in many markets, people have had a choice. National media watchers may not know it, but free alternative weekly newspapers, combined, outcirculate Time and Newsweek combined. In some markets they have higher market penetration than the dailies they compete with. As dailies have become more vanilla, alt weeklies have continued to offer a strong point of view and compelling, long-form local storytelling — they have personality, and therefore have created strong loyalty among their readers. Dailies have other problems, to be sure — as alt weeklies, do — but no story on daily flailings is complete without discussing the rise of the alt weeklies. (Note: I publish The Inlander, the alt weekly in Spokane, Wash.)

A bit of perspective from someone who applied to journalism school the year Nixon resigned. The industry then was obsessed with finding a way to deliver the news that 1) didn't get your fingers inky, 2) didn't consume vast forests and 3) could circumvent the afternoon rush hour traffic (the last of particular salience to me; I have worked for three pm dailies, all deceased.) The Internet provided all these, and newspapers mystifingly have dropped the ball.

The most amazing quote in the Salon article was from the NYT person who said it would be unfair for the online version to "carry" the print version. The result of that thinking is that I get to read the best newspaper in the country everyday online, for free (and get the occasional Maureen Dowd column forwarded to me). I'll never shop at the stores I see advertised on the Times' site, and tragically, I know more about NYC poltiics than I do about what's going on in my hometown of Atlanta. Someone, clearly not journalists, will find a business model to make the local news franchise profitable again. News junkies of all ages will be here when it happens.

I'm sometimes puzzled by all the ire that these tabloid spinoffs have stirred up, as if a few fluffy weeklies are going to bring down journalism as we know it. I don't hear many people complaining that Conde Nast's decision to publish Cargo is going to hurt the New Yorker or mark the beginning of the end for thoughtful magazine journalism.

Frankly, daily newspapers could learn a lot from these tabs in terms of presentation (good layout makes stories more compelling, whether we like it or not), in terms of alternate approaches to potentially mundane stories (entertaining and informative are not mutually exclusive) and in terms of their willingness to completely ignore the latest Township Construction Board meeting (civic engagement good, having the point of it drowned in deathly dull details bad).

That said, I think these tabs are probably the wrong approach and that they reflect the newspaper industry's persistent unwillingness to rethink the kind of reporting they've been doing for the past few decades or to put in the work it will take to appeal both to older habitual readers and to younger folks who may not find intrigue at the local community college quite so compelling.

This reminds me of Jeff Goldblum's character in The Big Chill. A People Magazine 'writer' who knowingly describes his craft as being allowed to write about anything he wants, as long as it can be read in the time it takes to take the average crap.

!

In all the previous letters with excellent comments and points, no one mentioned a very important factor in the demise of newspapers. Nor did Farhad Manjoo.

Money. The US general population is getting poorer, (yes Virginia!) and you can see this in the demise of the biggest supporters of newspaper advertising. The classy department stores with pages and pages of elegantly hand-drawn fashion ads, tons of sale photos are going going, gone. Have you seen WalMart advertise in major newspapers even though they have more money than god? Sears used to have tons of ads, but the new Sears/KMart is barely alive.

In a major and moneyed market like Los Angeles, the Times looks like a pauper these days. It has dumbed down even its comics section for the imaginary youth market. There are very few ads from the remaining few major department stores. Everything is called Calendar I, Calendar II, even Calendar III on some days. The ads in calendar come from movies and entertainment. So the comics, the puzzles, advice columns, even the bridge column--off to the ultimate Calendar section they went.

And since it was sold to Chicago Tribune, the editorials are mostly garbage. Although it is considered too liberal to sell well in Orange County or San Diego (both major metropolitan areas without a decent paper,) L.A. Times sports suffocating right wing opinions on most mornings.

I get it out of habit. No one needs the papers any longer. Unlike younger readers, I like newsprint and its messiness, and its foldability. I too get most of my real news from the internet just like the younger generations who think I am probably an old fossil who needs to read the the paper for some reason.

"RedEye, however, is unlikely to provide anyone with a working knowledge of current events." Mr. Manjoo writes this and then goes on to point out the "lighter" cover stories that often appear in RedEye, but the fact is, RedEye CAN provide one with a working knowledge of current events. Every day RedEye contains wire stories and Tribune stories of national and international importance, read them and you will be more informed about current events than the average person. Yes, the stories may be trimmed down a bit, but they are there and they are sufficient to give readers a snapshot of what is going on in the world. Every newspaper, news magazine and news broadcast is a mixture of hard and soft content, these tabloids are only different in how they organize and emphasize these two types of content. If you ride the trains in Chicago, you see that almost everyone reads RedEye; if the choice is between people reading RedEye or reading no newspaper at all, then what's wrong with RedEye?

A second point. Is it possible that people are not getting dumber or less interested in being informed but that newspapers have gotten worse at informing and engaging readers?