Boo! Hiss!

By Alicia Dorr in News on Jul 17, 2007 6:11PM

While we remain convinced that the major reason newspapers are in decline is because they've consistently refused to change and employed strange dinosaurs long after they should have kicked the bucket, this just plain sucks.

There is absolutely no refuting the Tribune Company's revenue decline, and the people who run the newspapers aren't stupid, but it's been a long time since Ben Franklin posted classifieds on his front page. We think a front page clean of marketing ploys is one of the things American newspapers have done right when compared with their global counterparts. There is enough advertising throughout the rest of the paper, and the rest of our lives, for that matter.

The newspaper's editors opposed the move, basically arguing it wasn't in the best interest of the readers. We agree. We also agreed with L.A. Times Editor O'Shea when he fought the same losing battle, saying that the move would cheapen the front page. We don't care if it seems naive, but we are sincerely upset that advertisers know just what buttons to push so that they can get their way. They held the one clean space in American media for ransom and, because the publisher knew the readers were either too lazy or too nonexistent to complain, they got away with it.

Image via currybet.net, of an old front page of The Mirror.