On August 6th, 2007, The New York Times, the grey lady, is reducing its page width to twelve inches, the so-called new national standard. It's a dark day for those of us who grew up with newspapers but a who cares day for the young who prefer their news in a gossipy, comedic, excerpted in short grainy videos taking by people of their own ilk.
Hey, with the Internet, what can't you learn?
Plenty, it turns out. Our educational system is leaving lots of young people behind, and the curriculum has become sufficiently pallid that not even great teachers can compensate for it.
Tomorrow will be a sad day for me...the Times takes one more giant step to a tabloid format, and next they will be encouraging us to subscribe to the new electronic version which offers an identical copy of each and every page, as well as all the adverts.
No more complaining about the ink coming off on our fingers as it did up until a few years ago, no more of that exhilirating feeling of spreading your hands wide apart when you snapped the middle crease to make the next page easy to handle. Not much satisfaction in folding it down twice to put under your arm or in your brief case - it's basically folded already.
O Brave New World of the Midget Newspaper! Another great advance we are told, which is, in truth, nothing but another retreat.
I wonder if you can fold the new size into a pair of cranky pants to send to the publisher...
6th August Update:
I pulled today's mini-Times out of the paper box and forgot to control for the usual weight of the paper. Almost threw myself into the road. Anyway, I waited until I'd had a cup of coffee before examining it, and I've still got my cranky pants on.
Everything seems too small, too light, for a publication as important as "the Times." Sounds odd, I know, but that's my first take on it, and given my advancing years, I doubt I'll change my mind on the matter.
What else makes me cranky....oh,yeah, product packaging which requires a hacksaw to open, but then we all agree on that, don't we?
Sunday, August 5, 2007
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