my newspaper

The front page of today’s Dallas Morning News includes articles about new trails and a nature center along the Trinity River; about the raid on a polygamist ranch in West Texas; about the problems with privatization of Texas’ social services; about a debate over nets people who live on golf courses are erecting to catch errant balls before they do damage and, oh yes, a small wire story about Iraq.
So I’m wondering if the newspaper front page is even relevant anymore. Except for that wee international story and two state stories, how does this front page differ from the Metro section?

Newspapers are so confused these day.

The Metro section front page leads with the story I care about most—four teenagers were arrested as suspects in last month’s 26 car fires in Oak Cliff. Why is that not on the front page rather than the golf balls story? If people decide to live on golf courses, aren’t flying balls, um, par for the course? (Evidently, improvements in golf equipment allow bad golfers to hit balls farther and so the problem is growing. Poor, poor people on golf courses.)

I’m not sure why I’m expected to care so much about this that the story needs to be on the front page of my morning paper. Some people might suggest that it’s because the golf balls problem is in (wealthy) Plano whereas the car fires are in (depressed) Oak Cliff. That’s what some people might suggest. After all, aren’t crime and burning cars par for the course in Oak Cliff? Some people might think so.

Perhaps newspaper redesigns should be less about typeface than how the news is categorized. Perhaps we should have good news/bad news sections. Or rich man/poor man news. And sports, of course—although then we’d have to decide where today’s story about selling top-tier season tickets for the new Cowboys stadium should go. Is this sports or rich man news, since these seat licenses range between $16,000 and $150,000, with an additional $340 per ticket per game. (Woe is me, what is the world coming to?) It’s in the business section today, along with a story about how it’s getting harder to get loans for college. Interesting story and it's in the business sevtion …why?

Maybe we don’t even need to divide the newspaper into sections anymore, although that would make it hard to share in the morning.

An unrelated note: Writing in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof cites evidence supporting my theory that sexism is more entrenched than racism.