Does Walter Cronkite Know about This?

This is why I can never be allowed to observe focus groups: I will surely bust through that one-way glass window and administer hard spankings to each and every participant who seems incapable of just paging through a newspaper, looking at headlines and pictures, and deciding whether or not there's something worth stopping on.

I think we've overlistened to people who never read the paper, and yet insist it include more about their neighborhoods, lives, and concerns. A newspaper is filled with criminals, celebrities and fools and I for one am happy when it doesn't include my life or neighborhood in theirs.

Then again, no one is interested in my new slogan for The Post: 'News Flash: Everything's Not Always About You,.'"

My local paper just went through one of these redesigns, so I can feel his pain. In one swift stroke, it went from being a decent paper to being a decent paper for dummies. It's a local version of the USAToday. Well, it's more like a USAToday that's been edited by a high school journalist. Who left his ritalin at home. The who, what, when, where, and why -- the foundations of newspaper writing -- are all there; it's just, now, because the stories are so truncated, they're more like Who?! What?! Where?! How?! and Why?! "Why?!" is exactly the point: What did newspaper publishing ever do to deserve this.

Admission: I love reading the newspaper. Sitting in a big comfy chair, with the morning paper and a cup of coffee, there's nothing better than that that doesn't involve sex and/or ice cream.

Or that's how it use to be. Now, thanks to focus groups and a fascination with making everything in our culture child consummable, everything's gone to hell in a handbasket.

Obviously, that's a longer post for another day. I'm in too foul a mood right now to write it.

So go read one of the blogs listed on the right, kids. Grandpa's grumpy today.