Who wants yesterday's paper?
Jun. 20th, 2014 03:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blogcutterI do! Seriously, I scarcely recognize the Ottawa Citizen since they revamped it about a month ago.
For starters... don't most people want to see front-page news on the front page? Or at least in the first few pages? There doesn't seem to be any international news at all in that first section any more - instead, the first section is "politics and the public service", generally at the national level. OK, so I know this is a government town - but have we become that insular?
Then there are the bizarre names for the sections. "Context"? "You"? I guess we live in an age when everything starts with either i or u - iPods, iPads, iMacs, youtube... unless of course it's e- as in e-mail, e-books and e-zines!
They've also fired dear Abby and mucked about with the comics and puzzles pages. No more Sally Forth, Rose is Rose, Classic Peanuts or For Better or Worse (though to be fair, those last two were all reruns anyway). No more Dilbert or Doonesbury. I do quite like having Bizarro, Rhymes with Orange and The Other Coast but would cheerfully dispense with Hagar the Horrible, Family Circus and Hi & Lois. Maybe they could bring back a few golden oldies like Cathy or Calvin & Hobbes? Even Mary Worth and Brenda Starr were good for a few campy laughs!
Then there are the puzzles. No more Canadian Cyberquotes - I used to do those every day without fail. In fact there's very little Canadian content of any kind - it's much more generic. They even tried to get rid of the North of 49 crossword on Saturdays but brought it back after some protests from readers. Even so, it's in much smaller type now, further alienating the paper-paper's main demographic fan base! When they got rid of the Sunday paper, I guess I knew in my heart of hearts that they wouldn't keep giving us double puzzles on Saturdays forever but some of these changes really seem to defy reason.
To be fair, I haven't explored some of the new e-features (there's that awful prefix again) like 6PM updates pushed to your iPad (mainly because I don't have an iPad).
I don't think I'm exactly e-illiterate but I do object to being expected to constantly multitask and skim the surface and not being allowed to go into anything in any depth
any more. Seems to me a good portion of the younger generations have the attention span of a flea.
Is ADD/ADHD the new normal?
For starters... don't most people want to see front-page news on the front page? Or at least in the first few pages? There doesn't seem to be any international news at all in that first section any more - instead, the first section is "politics and the public service", generally at the national level. OK, so I know this is a government town - but have we become that insular?
Then there are the bizarre names for the sections. "Context"? "You"? I guess we live in an age when everything starts with either i or u - iPods, iPads, iMacs, youtube... unless of course it's e- as in e-mail, e-books and e-zines!
They've also fired dear Abby and mucked about with the comics and puzzles pages. No more Sally Forth, Rose is Rose, Classic Peanuts or For Better or Worse (though to be fair, those last two were all reruns anyway). No more Dilbert or Doonesbury. I do quite like having Bizarro, Rhymes with Orange and The Other Coast but would cheerfully dispense with Hagar the Horrible, Family Circus and Hi & Lois. Maybe they could bring back a few golden oldies like Cathy or Calvin & Hobbes? Even Mary Worth and Brenda Starr were good for a few campy laughs!
Then there are the puzzles. No more Canadian Cyberquotes - I used to do those every day without fail. In fact there's very little Canadian content of any kind - it's much more generic. They even tried to get rid of the North of 49 crossword on Saturdays but brought it back after some protests from readers. Even so, it's in much smaller type now, further alienating the paper-paper's main demographic fan base! When they got rid of the Sunday paper, I guess I knew in my heart of hearts that they wouldn't keep giving us double puzzles on Saturdays forever but some of these changes really seem to defy reason.
To be fair, I haven't explored some of the new e-features (there's that awful prefix again) like 6PM updates pushed to your iPad (mainly because I don't have an iPad).
I don't think I'm exactly e-illiterate but I do object to being expected to constantly multitask and skim the surface and not being allowed to go into anything in any depth
any more. Seems to me a good portion of the younger generations have the attention span of a flea.
Is ADD/ADHD the new normal?
(no subject)
Date: 2014-07-19 10:19 pm (UTC)