I’ve lived in a number of cities and had the opportunity to read newspapers daily in some of the cities. The more I read the San Diego Union Tribune, the more I believe it is one of the worst papers I’ve ever read (even worse than USA Today). For starters, they put editorials on the front page; I learned when I was on the high school newspaper that editorials shouldn’t go on the front page. Second, they put stories that are fluff stories on the front page. A few months ago, there was an article about Rejection Hotline on the front page even though nothing was new about it. This morning’s paper (Sunday) had an article about the city attorney. While the article, itself, was OK, it wasn’t breaking news as it followed the city attorney through a typical day and mentioned that it was done in September.
Furthermore, the newspaper has frequent mistakes, such as an article today that said: “…a member of the SDSU homecoming court who road in the parade in a white convertible.” I almost busted out laughing at this mistake. Does anyone proofread there? Granted spell check wouldn’t catch it, but reading it would. The newspaper uses a lot of wire reports and most of the real news isn’t from their own reporters. While this isn’t really a bad thing, I got most of the same information on the news with the same twist the evening before.
I haven’t mentioned that the Republican bias is seen throughout the paper. It is very disturbing to have to wade through the bias and poor writing to get information out of the paper. Last year, they put a grotesque picture on the front page which was completely unnecessary and in poor taste. We almost cancelled out subscription then, but my wife likes the Sunday paper and likes certain sections during the week. At this point, I say that the only reason we keep getting the paper is so that the dog has something to do in the morning as his job is to run outside and retrieve the paper (yes, he actually does it, except for Sunday because the paper is too big).