A few months back, an editorial in The Commercial Appeal blamed the growing number of small but niggling errors in the paper on a recent redesign coupled with adjustments to new technologies. The Fly has obtained an internal CA memo that suggests something else entirely. “We aren’t going to continue to try to replate the main sheet [of the paper] for DeSoto, the suburbs, and the city of Memphis,” it says, implying that our daily paper was putting forward a different “face” based on perceived differences between urban and suburban readers. “We’re going to edit the paper with our best stuff leading the section and with a nod toward keeping our suburban and DeSoto subscribers top of mind.”
Well, I guess that tells you where the city-dwelling subscribers are kept. Oy. — Chris Davis
Plante: How It Looks
