is the second. Aside from a hilarious poetic commentary by Les Barker, this is what I experienced as I leafed through the today’s San Jose Mercury News. “Oh, this is just like the Peninsula Times Tribune before its demise.”
We subscribed to the PTT when we first moved to Palo Alto in 1982. It was the local newspaper, as the Merc was very much a San Jose paper, and the Chron and Examiner wouldn’t deign to cover the peninsula. But those very dark Reagan years (don’t believe the received wisdom that he was a GREAT President) with its abysmal economy, took its toll. Within a few years there were hardly any ads, and the paper only pretended to have sections.
Today’s Merc was like that — the Living section was one sheet folded in half. It won’t be long before the format changes again: the first section for state, national and local news; the second for sports, business and comics. It’s very sad to see. I should probably vacuum pack a couple of papers to sell on E-Bay in twenty years to people who want to explain the word newspaper to their grandchildren.