Small print and cheap shots

Cheap Shot

I realize that Neal Obermeyer has great latitude with editorial content, but I think his June 26 installment was a cheap shot.

The SDPD has had its problems with rogue officers over the years, but I have to take issue with Obermeyer’s portrayal of chief Lansdowne in his cartoon. Has there been any evidence of him “looking the other way”? If so, let’s see it in the Reader!

• Les Merrill
• Ramona

Going Bad

This is a tip to people who find it difficult to read the Reader, and think maybe they’re getting old and their eyesight is going bad. Well, it isn’t that. The Reader’s gone to smaller print.

I just came across a letter to the editor from January 2009, which I had saved. I looked at it and thought, Gee, that looks like a lot bigger print than what’s in the Reader now. And it sure in the heck is! There was a column 5-1/8” long, and there were 32 lines of print in January, 2009. Well, guess what? The latest Reader today, I measured the same column length from another letter to the editor — in a June 2014 Reader — and in 5-1/8” they have 35 lines of print squeezed in, whereas the older Reader had 32 lines of print in the same space.

So, yes it’s getting harder to read.

The same thing in your classifieds. You don’t have many classified ads anymore, but they’re almost impossible to read. And that page in the back where you have those pictures of stupid-ass dogs and cats that some asshole wants you to take for 200-plus dollars to “adopt them.” There are some notices with upcoming events in there, and it’s such tiny print you can hardly read it.

If anybody has saved an older Reader from five or ten years ago for some reason or other, compare it to one from today and see how small the print is now.

That’s the same reason I don’t bother to take the Union-Tribune anymore, because they’ve gone to little bitty pages and little tiny fine print. The want ads are almost impossible to read because the print is so small.

Even the funny pages, for Pete’s sake. They’re not even funny and you can’t read the things. Some of the Reader’s comics are just as bad.

So, anyway, if any of you think you’re getting old and your eyes are going bad, it’s not that. It’s the Reader that’s going bad.

• Name Withheld
• via voicemail