#130 - Dog Trainer Year in Review

Patterico releases his second annual review of the LA Times' performance as a masthead of the mainstream media.

To sum up what Patterico takes all year to point out: they stink.

They stink so bad that Patterico needs to issue a two-parter (part two coming soon) to handle every misstatement, falsehood, and biased invective issued by this major metropolitan fish-wrapper just this year alone.

I subscribed once upon a time. Maybe even twice, but my memory for such things is suspect. They usually get me when I'm trying to be budget conscious and hit me with the "hundreds of dollars in coupons alone in the Sunday edition!" line. So I cave, and ultimately get so angry reading their bald-faced slants that I angrily call and cancel. This, of course, gives them latitude to harangue me for the rest of my natural life because I used to be a customer, so, by golly, I must want to be one again.

They don't understand that I have been through my twelve-step program for LATimes addicts, and as a recovering subscriber I am likelier to take up snake charming than to ever subscribe to their rag again.

Their telemarketing scripts haven't changed much over the years. They invariably hit me with the old coupons line, as well as pointing out that they have "increased their local coverage" again this year. That usually means that my community now receives two columns of print, instead of one and a half. Also, they only tend to report on my community when that community somehow affects Los Angeles. This they call "expanded" coverage.

Funnier still is dealing with their telemarketers. All I have to do is point out to them that the paper may just as well be in the direct employ of the Democratic National Committee and they immediately begin harping on that coupons line. Yep... those coupons certainly appeal to my greedy Republican nature, but not enough, I'm afraid, to make me want to subscribe.

Still, the next time I want to help the kids make a few paper hats, I might visit the newsstand. For old Times' sake.

UPDATE: Silly me. Part Two was here all along.