I get the paper (4 days a week) but I don’t check it first thing. So I was shocked when my friend Bruce told me he cancelled the Los Angeles Times today. He’s one of only a couple of friends who still get the paper! Oh, no! We can’t exchange complaints and info!
I asked him why, and he said “Johnny Depp is on the front page.”
“I don’t understand. I don’t like him either, but…”
“No, his face was all over the front page. They did this once before, and it just makes the paper look so trashy.”
I had no idea what he meant, but I wanted to tell him about a trashy editor of a woman’s magazine who had been so rude to me today, so we changed the topic.
Now I just heard John and Ken on KFI talking about the same thing! I ran to get the paper out of the plastic bag, and, um, it does look pretty bad. It’s a fake front page, with a hideous photo of Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter in the new release of Alice in Wonderland. (Does Johnny Depp have a big space between his teeth? Euwww. His hair is wild orange like Carrot Top.)
The photo and the ad, all in color, covers the entire front page, except for a few paragraphs on either side and the top pretend masthead. It really looks like the front page – they call it a cover-wrap.
Unattractive, but this is an industry town. I’m not offended.
Oh My Gah, I just saw that the NY Times reported on this!
