the incredible shrinking newspaper

We get two newspapers here at home, the Los Angeles Times and the Press-Enterprise. The L.A. Times is doing well in spite of its ownership struggles. The PE has had its own ownership struggles, but is doing not as well.

For some months the business section in the PE has been folded into the back of the front section, rather than being an independent section. Late in the summer our local columnist retired, I suspect not of his own volition. He was not replaced. Shortly thereafter a regional columnist retired, also not replaced.

More recently, the paper eliminated the TV grid and reworked the comics page. On Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday, when the comics are in the Life (now Lifestyle) section it consists of a whopping four pages.

I care because I grew up with this newspaper. In the sixties it was the morning Daily Enterprise throughout most of Riverside county, and in the city of Riverside it was the afternoon Press. Saturdays and Sundays it was the combined Press-Enterprise. I was a Daily Enterprise paperboy for a number of years, getting up at five a.m. to deliver the paper and collecting subscription fees at the end of the month.

It is a different world now, and the afternoon newspaper has gone the way of the of the dodo bird. But it is hard to see my newspaper facing such hard times.

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