My local city paper has been decaying in front of my eyes. Early changes included "short-sheeted" pages. One or more pages would be half width or less. In the last few weeks, the main section has been taken over by ads. In today's paper, of 14 pages, 8 are completely filled with ads. And I'm not talking normal newspaper ads - I'm talking about the crap you'd see in those free paper kiosks, ads covering the entire page offering to buy your jewelry, coins, and gold. Five of these pages are from one company. Only the ad on the back page is a normal Fry's ad. This doesn't include the smaller normal ads on the other pages between the stories.

The editorial page has gone in the toilet. The editors are dimbulbs, and the letters page has devolved to something worse than the comment section on the cheesiest blog you can think of.

God knows how many employees they have left. Maybe they're doing the best they can with what they've got left.

Frankly, if they didn't put comics in the paper, I'd cancel the subscription. I like reading the funnies over my cereal in the morning. I check out the news and stuff later, but usually I've already gotten most of it by then on the internet.

Robert's local - he probably knows what I'm talking about.