Good point, Ryan. Excellent post! You're right, I was talking about why people buy papers generally, not why they buy one over the other. It is interesting that you cite columnists as being important to you, yet your age puts you squarely in the demographic least likely to buy newspapers in the first place. I'd like to know the numbers, but I suspect your demographic (under 30 fan of sports columnists) lags most others in the number of papers they buy.

And while the weather might not seem important to you, both papers feel the need to compete over it, apparently because they understand a lot of their customers are looking for it. To wit: both papers believe weather is so important they put weather headlines on page 1. If columnists were so important to people buying papers, wouldn't we have promos/teases for columnist articles on page 1 rather than weather teases?

I agree Beardown. Good columnists are historically an important part of newspapers. But newspapers are dying. And so is the importance of columnists. If you want a columnist now, there are 100s of websites, news channels and sports channels that will give you all the opinions you want.

I buy the Suntimes for three reasons:

A) Gotta have more Feder
B) Elliott Harris
C) Easiest newspaper to flip through and read while driving 60MPH.

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The name's Rockmore. Beef Rockmore

Well if there's one of you I'm sure there's more. But then again people also buy those magnetic bracelets off the National Enquirer. So, you know.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

marriottis a big reason i get the sun times every day

Bumping this thread for some funny comments I saw - funny how they had a 'technical glitch' and lost the chat transcript apparently from last week with Jay

http://blogs.suntimes.com/fullcourtpres ... .html#more

It's great that many find Jay a "skilled' writer. I still argue that subject matter has to be one of the more important aspects of being a good columnist and this is where dear Jay fails miserably.

Maybe if Mariotti could exhibit the slightest bit of professionalism, I'd be able to appreciate his work, but I can't.

Fuck Jay and his newspaper.

Man, I thought this was Dan Bernstein until the part about radio hosts being overpaid. Then, of course, the use of the word 'humble' in referring to his opinion made me sure it's not Dan.

People do buy the Tribune over the Sun Times on Sunday.

I read all of both sports sections and that's about it.

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