It is to laugh heartily (or cry pitifully) to gander Chi Trib’s front page as presented to home-delivery subscribers, with major big-color-pic-accompanied story about organic foods (“Consumers buying into organic farms“), the gay parade (pic of joyous watchers waving) to go with story later in paper (“A rainbow of issues at pride parade”), HIV testing (“HIV tests of teens still rare“), and “Kagan hearings are set to start,” a “news focus.”
Marshall McLuhan’s telling newspaper publishers,”People don’t actually read newspapers, they get into them every morning like a hot bath” never rang truer. It’s all soft, soft, soft, comfort food for a certain demographic, even the Kagan piece, which is purely a scene-setter.
No news on this front page. God forbid. We wouldn’t want to upset anyone. Not even city workers loafing on the job, as in the Col. McCormick days. Bye-bye newspapering.
Blithe Spirit 