Posted 6:02 PM by Gene

Here's why most of the free dishrags -- er, newspapers will fail: they're indistinguishable from the (hold your nose) alternative weeklies whose graffiti-enhanced boxes pockmark our cities (in several senses) and whose contents are frequently strewn all over streets, or mixed with a bagman's belongings. They're also so easy a read you can finish them in five seconds. But the beauty part is they drag down regular newspapers too: people figure, if this is all we can expect from a newspaper, why should we pay for one? And they won't attract the YOUNG audience as most are semi-literate at best anyway. But if the freebies are what it takes to put the millionaire pundits and ad-blurb copywriters and high-mucky-muck vacuum-sealed editorialists out to pasture, I say, bring them on!