Silly season

Maybe it's just the silly season, but the Melbourne Age seems to be turning an ever tighter death-spiral. When I picked up yesterday's copy, it felt about half of its usual weight, and my newspaper guy explained that this is because the advertising pulls back over the holiday period. Judging by the sheer physical evidence of weight, and the number of full-page ads it runs in the news section, the Age is no longer a newspaper that runs advertising, but an advertising broadsheet that runs a few news items. And what news items.

Today's lead is about a 'poll' that rebuts John Howard's claim that Australia is not a racist country. So there. Of course, Kim Beazley also said this, but we don't see a headline saying 'Poll rebuts Beazley'. Then there's the page three piece on 'research' into why girls torture their Barbie dolls. At least they didn't make them form human pyramids, or flush pages of the Koran in front of Burqa Barbie. Page 8 has the cheery festive headline: 'Humble Bush admits he made errors'. God bless us, every one!

Most of this pales beside yesterday's bizarre essay by former New York Times editor Howell Raines, about how the Bush 'dynasty' is using political office to enrich itself. George W. is apparently too crass to even know that the correct, NYT-endorsed way to enrich yourself is to marry a series of wealthy women. The Age reminded us of Raines' Pulitzer Prize, but somehow left out the bit about him having to resign over the Jayson Blair scandal.