The National Post

A few weeks ago, I signed up for a freebie from Redflagdeals.com: a 90-day subscription to the National Post. Actually, the freebie seems to turn up often, and every time I attempted to sign up for it, they never seem to find my house.

Last week, there was an automated phone call that reminded me that I signed up for this thing (which by then I had totally forgotten due to not remembering what I do a few minutes after I do them). After chatting like a confused old lady with the service representative, I was told that it comes from Monday to Saturday until the 90 days are up.

Anyway, the whole point of the National Post being given away is because no one gets their news from "dead tree" media anymore, so they're hoping that you would get used to accepting their newspaper long enough that you'll want to pay for it over the longer term.

However, as soon as I received the paper for the first time last Tuesday, I immediately saw a problem:

It sucks. Itsucksitsucksitsucksitsucks it SUCKS.

A newspaper that has a decidedly conservative view is already unreadable to me. It's difficult to take any articles seriously when there's a definite slant to reporting (after a week, I can probably point out a dozen articles); as a critical thinker, it's enough to make my head asplode.

However, discussions on the editorial and letters pages are infuriating; besides editors driving a wedge between Canadians with "western" and "eastern" values, it's the delayed discussion between letter writers (by several weeks sometimes), that in the age of high speed internet, I'd rather read flame wars in real time between people who actually read the news in not the National Post.

It's not a very large paper; national papers need an extremely wide daily circulation and making a hundred pages an issue isn't really cost effective. So what could this paper publish daily that would ensure affluent people would buy it? Financial Post. Half of the paper is composed of a thick blah about numbers that are already outdated by the time they send the pages out to print. And I don't care.

So now that I've killed several trees, I can save you all money by telling you that it's easier, saner, and less headache-inducing to read the news on the internet. However, I admit sometimes it is nice to be able to pick up a physical newspaper and read, but don't pick the National Post.