The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
1:00pm on Saturday, 12th February, 2005:
Outburst
The playwright Arthur Miller died yesterday. It was on page 1 of The Independent. It was also on pages 4 and 5, and there was a 1½ -page obituary. 4½ pages for an American playwright?
They do this kind of thing quite often, to give the impression they're a bastion of culture. If Jacqueline Wilson died tomorrow, she might get half a page of obituary and half a page of editorial, but is she any less important than Arthur Miller? What's the difference in impact between someone who writes extremely popular yet socially aware children's books and someone who wrote two classic plays and married Marilyn Monroe?
I think Arthur Miller merited any two out of: front page; pages 4 and 5; obituary. I'd have gone for option that dropped the front page.
What's particularly ironic about this is that yesterday's Independent carried a variety of headlines, in an effort to chastise other newspapers for clearing the decks to bring us the new of Prince Charles' forthcoming wedding to Camilla Parker-Bowles. The very next day they do exactly the same thing themselves for an event that is of even less relevance to their readers.
It's because they switched from broadsheet to tabloid format...
Referenced by Numbers, they're just SO complicated.
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Copyright © 2005 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).