Somewhat ripped off
So the Times shrunk today and that’s OK; good for trees and budgets and such. We’ll get used to it. They say that each page will have “somewhat fewer words,” which is really bad editing; there are either fewer words or there aren’t; “somewhat” is meaningless and a grammatical waste of one of those precious words left behind.
I pick up the business section — which, on Mondays, covers what interests me most: media — and there are five — not one, not two but five — house ads adding up to more than a page and a half of an eight-page section (of which another one and a quarter pages were paid ads). There’s another page of house ads in the metro section. And this is the Monday paper, which is thin anyway.
Jeesh. You’d think on the day you shrink the paper, you could at least fill up the pages with those somewhat fewer words — especially after you’ve raised the price 25 percent to $1.25. I feel ripped off.
Tags: newspapers
August 6th, 2007 at 9:31 pm
Could have been worse, they could have said “somewhat less words.”
August 7th, 2007 at 2:33 am
Reminds me of that scene from “Amadeus” — where Salieri is trying to help the Emperor come up with a criticism of Mozart’s music.
“Too many notes.”
“Really? Well, if your majesty will kindly tell me which notes it is that he objects to, I shall remove them.”
However, at some point, the Times is going to have to pay attention to all the readership surveys, and bid a sad farewell to the idea that readers will be so entranced by the content that they’ll actually follow a front-page jump inside.
August 7th, 2007 at 5:02 am
Very good, Jeff. A powerful combination of logic and grammar. I expect you’ll have a full apology from the Times before noon!
Incidentally, I’ve referenced you at GrammarBlog.
August 7th, 2007 at 7:08 am
The Times’ business strategy is starting to remind me of the Von Trapp family singers’ number in the Sound of Music, where the kids sing “So long, farewell” in a national competition. The papers’ sections are slowly leaving the stage one at a time, bidding adieu to “yieu and yieu and yieu.” I suppose the final edition might be just a picture of a sad, yet still defiant “Pinch” Sulzberger in ledenhosen. (Steve Boriss, The Future of News)
August 7th, 2007 at 9:06 am
[...] it’s taken the Times–who’s print edition will soon be able to fit in your front pocket–two years and some staggering losses to learn what a bad business model pay-based [...]
August 7th, 2007 at 9:55 am
How can they fill up the space with more editorial material when they don’t have the staff to do it?
The Times may not have been decimated by layoffs like its competitors, but the number of people doing original reporting is not what it used to be.
August 7th, 2007 at 9:59 am
The Times has been in the space-filling business for years, part of the hubris of claiming to be the newspaper of record. So now they are less, fewer; it’s all the same, since they haven’t been as much as they’ve claimed to be for quite some time.
August 7th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
Would that fewer words would extend to Saturday’s x-word puzzle.
August 7th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
Maybe they should solicit bids from Murdoch….
August 7th, 2007 at 9:23 pm
[...] BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » Somewhat ripped off Death of Print update: The New York Times just got smaller. And it costs more… (tags: moi) [...]
August 7th, 2007 at 9:44 pm
You shouldn’t joke too much about Murdoch. I’m sincerely relieved he hasn’t tried to buy the Times yet. Even as a symbol, if that’s what its really becoming these days, symbols still stand for something.
As well as alliterations.
August 9th, 2007 at 12:32 am
It’s a sad day when “the best” is just “better than the rest” - while “the rest” coiuldn’t report the unbiased truth even if it was the first thing out of someone’s mouth.