Joe Jackson - "Sunday Papers"
1979
I recently ended my subscription to the Minnesota Star Tribune. Reducing the sports page to four pages on weekdays was part of the decision, as was their setting the print deadline for the next day’s news at 5:15 p.m., as was the constant flow of depressing headlines when sitting down to read it nightly after dinner. The final straw was something that happened over the span of a week or so in the sports pages. Shortly after the December 12th blockbuster trade in which the Wild obtained elite defenseman Quinn Hughes, columnist LaVelle E. Neal III wrote a (in my opinion correct) column about how this was the right move for the Wild, time for them to put their chips in and go for it by acquiring such a talent. A few days later, columnist Chip Scoggins wrote a (in my opinion correct) column about how this was the right move for the Wild, time for them to put their chips in and go for it by acquiring such a talent. Then a few days after that, columnist Jim Souhan wrote a (in my opinion correct) column about how this was the right move for the Wild, time for them to put their chips in and go for it by acquiring such a talent. Isn’t there an editor at the Strib who said: “Hey the readers don’t need to read the same thing three times in less than a week?”
Then there’s Evan Ramstad’s staid business columns, he had a recent headline: “Minnesotans’ moderation, not radicalism, is working against Trump’s immigration crackdown.” Or how about never being able to decipher what the heck John Rash is writing on the opinion page (I swear I’ve gotten headaches trying to work through a piece of his.) Plus I’m weary of every year or so having to send an email reminding them that in the Miracle on Ice game, the USA team beat the Soviets in a medal round game and not a semifinals game (or that when the Americans beat the Finns to win the gold that was also a medal round game and not a finals game — look it up) because some reporter will inevitably write that incorrectly. Seeing the correction in print a few days later would be small vindication but why deal with the hassle?
So I decided to not spend $249 a year just for the pleasure of reading Arlo and Janis. I decided to get an Apple Premier bundle to get Apple News+ along with my Apple Music and Apple TV subscriptions, I found out getting that bundle was cheaper than my previous Apple subscriptions plus the Star Tribune one. (I created a spreadsheet, these numbers are incontrovertible.) And after poking around in Apple News+, I found out I can follow … The Minnesota Star Tribune and read a bunch of their articles there. So come Stanley Cup playoffs time I can see what their sports columnists think about that trade for Quinn Hughes. Can’t wait.