Dumbing down The Times

[bibblebub]

Page 9 of The Times today is given over to pizza ovens complete with a big picture of an actress standing next to hers.

Surely this is the sort of piffle that should be in one of the many (far too many) pull-out sections that comes with the paper at weekends, not in the first few pages of the main news section.

I know that this hasn't suddenly started and has been going on for some time but is this dumbing down / going downmarket too far, or am I having a grumpy day?

[gettinblurry]

mmmmmm pizza :)

[chokkie]

Hi BB, funny you should mention. OH was reading the Times at breakfast this morning and he commented that some of the writers on that newspaper are just soooo vacuous! It is just piffle, as you say. There are one or two really piffley writers for the Telegraph as well. In the Telegraph they do a weekend feature called "my perfect weekend" (or something like that). This week's subject (a woman) was absolutely pathetic, I had to stop reading it and look elsewhere.

[bibblebub]

At least when I eventually sort out which pages belong to which supplement I can see that if it's called 'Lifestyle' or some such insipid title then it be cast to one side immediately without wasting a second viewing its contents.

The title at the top of that page 9 is 'News', same as page 10 which is just waffle about parenting (although I suppose that is due to a book that has just been published). I just find it mildly irritating that non-stories like that are in the main section under the news heading.