Paul Berton, editor-in-chief of the London Free Press, responds to bouquets and barbs from readers responding to the redesigned paper in his column today.The changes were introduced on Monday. Barbs have included moving the news section, placement of obits and "our new way of lettering the sections."
Berton notes nothing is written in stone "so next week, we'll go back to a simple A, B, C system. We apologize for the confusion."
Meanwhile, the Ottawa Sun, in its 20th year, opened the phone lines to readers this week. Management took calls for two hours.
"Many callers were relieved to hear that reopening the Sun presses in Ottawa this month has meant a return to earlier and more consistent home deliveries, with improved sports scores," says Rick Gibbons, publisher and CEO.
Among the reader requests: Larger print in TV listings for seniors and more obituaries.
People love their obits. As the late, great comedian George Burns used to say, he reads the obits every morning and if he's not in them, he gets out of bed.
Writing obits is beneath a lot of reporters, but if properly researched they can be the better reads of the day. Nobody does it better than the Globe and Mail.
My complaint about the Globe obits is that they are random in terms of who gets in and who doesn't, and they often fail to be timely.
ReplyDeleteIn North America, nobody does obits better than the NYT. When any significant person dies, the NYT has at least a wire service obit on its website very quickly, and their own, written in-house, usually follows shortly thereafter.