Shitty Pages
Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, Wednesdays were celebrated in Minneapolis as "tabloid day," the day when the city's two free weeklies, the Twin Cities Reader and City Pages (referred to collectively as the "Reader Pages")were circulated, insuring at very least adequate bathroom reading through the weekend. The nasty capitalist machinations that took the Reader out of the equation have been old news for quite a while. Less remarked upon is the City Pages deterioration into what folks in the newspaper business used to refer to as a "one dumper"-- skim the letters, read The Blotter, Tom Tomorrow, and Savage Love, wipe, and flush.
Particularly disappointing is the Pages' tendency towards feature stories that seem to be geared to their author's hoped for a sub-Diablo Cody leap into careers writing teleplays for the Lifetime Movie Channel. This week-- an abused mother and children who fled (in the '90's-- news value?)to Amsterdam as "refugees". A couple of weeks back-- a story on gay Lutheran seminarians featuring a woman who received a message from God during a worship service informing her that she should go to seminary and, by the way, was a lesbian, that oddly enough missed the obvious mental health angle completely. One slogs through these multipage behemoths in vain trying to find some point larger than "Gosh, folks sure are mean," only to be left with a turnable page and a review of a restaurant one either can't afford or has no interest in. In a metro area this size with so many identifiable civic issues, the waste of journalistic forum is nothing short of breathtaking.
Still, having the Pages around does come in handy for stuffing the chimney starter for my barbeque (though I find that using the Onion imparts a bit more flavor) and for use as "City Place Mats" when I'm feeding my sons. Hey, reuse and recycle, right?
