It’s Sunday morning in Pasadena and my newspaper is sitting on the front lawn, untouched, while I write this story. The sprinklers went off this morning and I’m certain the paper is completely soaked. The delivery person (they don’t make ‘paper boys’ anymore) usually wraps the Times in plastic for just this reason. However, my experience has been that the bags leak just enough that my paper will have turned into a wet mass of newsprint dipped in black ink by the time I get to it.
It’s time for me to proclaimed something that I’ve been feeling for years: I hate the Sunday paper!!! And it’s not just because of the sprinkler thing.
For years now the Times editors have been tinkering with the format of their newspaper, hoping to attract more readers while simultaneously offering advertisers new formats. The result? The Sunday LA Times has turned into a fracking scavenger hunt!
Allow me to elaborate on a few of the things about the Sunday LA Times that drive me crazy:
- The Calendar section(s). This section used to be required reading. They lost me when they switched from the tabloid format to the full-sized paper format. Now they’ve actually made it worse by breaking the Calendar into multiple sections. Last week Kassia says “there’s something about Richard Thompson in today’s Calendar section”. I’m sorry, you’ll have to be more specific. Was that Calendar I, II, or III? Worse yet, like buildings in Japan, the sections are not filed sequentially. If there’s a way to make this section less usable I’m sure the Times editors are hard at work trying to figure it out.
- The Comics section(s). If the complete and utter destruction of the Calendar section wasn’t enough, we also have Comics I and Comics II. What the hell is that all about? I have this vague idea that one section is supposed to be more “family safe” than the other, but in reality it’s all about having another section to wrap those stupid quarter page ads around. For some reason when I’m searching for the comics I can never find the one I want to read. For the past month Comics I (or maybe it’s Comics II, I can’t be sure) has been missing from our paper. Or maybe it’s in there somewhere and I just don’t have the patience to dig it out.
- The Business section is MIA. And if it’s not the Business section, it’s the Sports section. Yet for some reason I never have any trouble finding that new Women’s Health section. The problem is the major sections of the paper are wrapped up in form fitting advertisements that disguise the whole section as advertising. It’s like peeling an onion to get to the actual news. I guess the assumption is that readers will happily dig through auto advertisements while looking for the Sports, because, hey, men buy trucks. Here’s a news flash for the editors of the Times: If I were in the market for a new automobile the LA Times is the LAST place I’d be looking (actually that may be a news flash for all of the auto dealers who buy those ads).
- The Classified section. Who places these ads? Do these people not know about Craig’s List? Will someone please tell them, because they’re killing a lot of trees for no good reason.
I could go on, but it’s Mothers Day and for some reason I’m expected to be a good son. My time for ranting about the Sunday paper is limited.
I just want to add that it’s the 21st century and we live in a search engine powered information society. When news happens we want to know about it right away. Hunting for day old news printed on soggy paper is for cavemen.
The newspaper business is in trouble because I’m not the only person who feels this way. A few years back the Washington Post did a focus group to find out why the paper’s circulation was dropping in the all-important 18-34 year old demographic. Participants indicated they wouldn’t take a subscription to the Post even if it was free. The reason: They didn’t like the idea of old newspapers piling up in their houses.
The hide-and-go-seek for the Comics section is particularly irksome. Since the dawn of time, it was easy to find the Comics section of every single Sunday paper in every single city.
For all I know, only the LA Times has taken this cynical approach: forcing me to go digging through 134,982 ads to find a Comics section is pure and utter bollocks!!
I remain, years later, baffled by the new and improved Calendar section. It is confusing and, mostly, I find myself relying on third parties to point me to items of interest. Which I then read online. The Richard Thompson thing is a great case in point — I only noticed it because it was featured in the new A section round-up of key articles (said round-up is a nice thing). The only thing better than seeing Richard Thompson’s smiling face was listening to Kirk’s attempts to locate the correct section of the paper. I think he invented new sentence structures.
And let’s not forget the fact that the Calendar section will start a story in I and finish it in II or III or IV. Now that’s what I call irksome.
The other thing about falling subscriptions could be in direct proportion to the people who are unable to program their sprinklers to go off at a different time of day.
We stopped getting the Sunday times because we were fed up getting slipped disks just carrying the bloated issue, but also because we felt we had better things to do than waste our time peeling off the “news” from the ads, and most importantly because the amount of real, editorial and info had become so anorexic. Then we stopped subscribing to the LAT, then we stopped reading it altogether. Besides the annoyance with the paper version, there’s just too much going in the world right that’s not properly covered by the big media, and plenty of other sources of info where one is able to find real journalism. Somehow, big guys like the LAT don’t seem to have figured that one out. Their ultimate loss.
I agree that the Calendar section was so much more fun to read in a tabloid format.
But say, speaking of comics, you didn’t mention my new cartoon in the new LA Times Sunday Magazine, West, always on page 5! That would cheer you right up.
Maybe I’m just cynical, but it seems to me that it’s all about getting visibility for the advertisers. Case in point: I discovered the missing Comcs II issue a few weeks back when it dawned on me that it seemed they’d “forgotten” to add the section to my paper for a couple of weeks running. So I went looking and found it – right in the middle of that big ads section that most of us routinely toss. It was wedged between the Home Depot insert and some mattress ad. The idea is clear – make the reader leaf through the ads to find the comics, and maybe they’ll stop at the ads instead.
Yeah, maybe I’m cynical … or just tired of getting worked.
Nailed it! I’ve been bitching about the demise of the tabloid-format Calendar section every Sunday since it went the way of Otis Chandler… and it’s not like the Times can’t bring it back! They do every freakin’ Thursday with that ultraperky Weekend Calendar thing.
And don’t get me started on the comics. It’s a rare Sunday that I actually lay hands on both sections. If I or II isn’t readily accessible, I don’t even bother to look.
I stopped subscribing at all around the time Scheer was dumped(not so much because I loved him that much, but in direct response to hearing the editor telling KCRW’s Warren Olney that “oh, some people are always going to be canceling for some perceived gripe, who cares?” Right, buddy—one more cancellation, coming up!
But the Sunday Times? I did continue to buy the Sunday paper(once upon a time, mainly for the late lamented Calendar tabloid version), but no longer. I’ve lived in L.A. since 1969, and this has got to a Sunday nadir for the Times. Horrible, confusing–and when you do find the actual “news”, well–there’s no “there” there either. The ads have won. Our loss.
I totally agree. I find the Sunday paper completely offensive – 80 per cent of it immediately goes in the recycling which is pretty criminal in my book. That a paper relies so heavily on insert sales that you can’t find the news section is counterproductive in the extreme. I hope more people cancel their subscriptions.
I am from England where the Sunday papers have advertising but it is not intrusive. There is also much more to read and they remain rewarding and informative. When you strip all the crap from the Sunday Times it’s slim pickings at best. The LA Times should subscribe to the UK Observer for a few weeks and see how it’s done.
This is so right on the money. Among our various jobs within the family, mine is to decode and delouse (i.e., de-advertise) the Sunday Times. It takes a while ! But I have developed some irritable expertise. Usually something gets lost, approx. 1 item a week.
And agree on the calendar. It was much more pleasant in tabloid format, and the substance seemed to have fallen with the change as well…plus the irritation at multip sections, as you all have noted.
The comics in 2 sections – ridiculous.
What about the Opinion — just a lot of vapidity nowadays. It used to be full of stronger, denser material . . . now it flaps in the intellectual breeze somewhat. Oh, oops!, that’s “Current” (whatever).
Hey, the sports is pretty good these days ! (Even if dwarved by the bounty of offerings on line.)
So tired of this paper . . . I grew up on it and daily papers in general and so want to love them. . . and they are making it so hard . . . I want to drop my subscription completely and might when I can convince my wife to go over to online news entirely (sigh)
Ditto on that Current section. They are trying to appeal to a younger demographic, I guess, but the writing is atrocious, always by the same old voices. I still get the paper out of some misplaced loyalty, but honestly, I am now subscribing to the NY Times to get my hard news — everyday.
And what about all those slippery FSI’s? That’s “free standing inserts,” that stack of slick color advertising sections that probably account for half the weight and heft of the Sunday paper. However, they are great if you are in the market for cheap running shoes from Big Five.
People have been predicting this for years. The smug promoters of paper printing have been saying just as loudly for years that it hasn’t happened yet, so all the doomsayers are wrong.
There is a third option, and it’s one I’ve been promoting for years; newspapers will disappear, eventually, but not in the next year, or the next decade. Someone in this article states 30 years. No, not even that soon. But I do predict that newspapers will be extinct for all practical purposes within 60 years. We’ll probably have national newspapers and that’s it. USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times will be our only remaining printed newspapers. In English, that is. There’ll probably be a national newspaper in Spanish as well.
It was worse: when the Times first split the comics, they included some silly language at the top of both sections to the effect that this was an improvement.
To his everlasting credit, when I pointed this out to late lamented Times editor John Carroll, he promised to remove it. The offending language was gone next time.
The real comics disappeared then returned on the
front of the Current (or Opinion) section. When seeing
those “comics” on the front of the Current section, I think I tossed that part for two weeks before I realized that I was not trashing the comics, but the redesigned Current section. The Comics section has more news compared to the Current section anyway. I would drop the Times if others in the house would just let go of it.
Yow, I wouldn’t mind the Comics scavenger hunt, so much, but when I do find it, I’m invariably disappointed. What kind of newspaper carries more comics on the weekdays than the weekends? If they’re gonna fill a page and a half with black and white comics every day, why can’t they spring for a decent selection of Sunday comics!? Argh.