The press: Shut down! By Media Farm

IT SEEMS THAT dailies with their own in-house operations are slowly going the way of the tyrannosaurus, another large, unwieldy creature with a tiny brain and inefficient little arms that were essentially there for decoration.

The latest in tragic newspaper news is the Globe closing its Billerica printing plant and shifting all operations to its Dorchester facility. And—duh!—this is due to dropping circulation, which makes two plants for one paper seem a bit extravagant. Except, the Billerica plant prints local editions of the Globe's Papa paper, the New York Times, and the Globe also prints a handful of local papers that don't fall under their corporate umbrella—like the Brockton Enterprise, the Quincy Patriot Ledger and the New York Post—which were probably additional sources of revenue for the floundering company.

What the fuck does all this mean?!!

According to Globe staffer Todd Wallack, Globe spokesman Bob Powers was not very forthcoming.

Globe spokesman Bob Powers said the Billerica satellite plant will probably close in 2009 or 2010, but the exact timing has not been set. He said it's unclear how many of the 200 workers at the 15-year-old plant would lose their jobs, adding that it depends on negotiations with labor unions and production decisions.

... Powers declined to say how much the Globe would save by closing the plant. He said the company is already working with real estate brokers to sell the site, but couldn't say how much it might fetch.

Powers didn't offer much more information for the Boston Herald, though Christine McConville bothered to ask about what this would mean for the other papers the Globe prints and got the very informative answer, "We have to figure that out."

McConville, perhaps out of temporary insanity borne from Powers' stoic non-answers, or maybe because she's been watching too many X-Files DVDs, invented a sprawling what-if scenario:

One rumored possibility is that the New York Times would be printed at a Norwood plant operated by Gannett Offset, a unit of USA Today publisher Gannett Co. Then the Times would no longer need the Globe for its presses, a position that could give the parent company a reason sell the to Globe.

Powers called the rumor "an interesting theory," but said it is too early for speculation.

You can just envision her fashioning a helmet out of aluminum, nodding her head vigorously and saying, "Right? Right?" and Powers slowly backing away.

... Or maybe it's not a conspiracy theory so much as a fantasy about the death of the Herald's broadsheet rival. The irony of the breathless prediction is that the Herald isn't exactly a vision of health. In fact, they closed their in-house press and outsourced their printing altogether back in June.

Shut down!

HEY, REMEMBER LAST WEEK, how Barack Obama said, "John McCain says he's about change, too, except for economic policy, health care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove-style politics. That's just calling the same thing something different. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig." And how he was then accused of being sexist toward McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, who also uses lipstick (didn't you notice? Howie Carr did) and has compared herself to a pit bull?

You haven't forgotten? That's probably because you have some short-term memory recall, and the "story" has been jammed down your throat every waking second. Oh, the sexism! Of course, "lipstick on a pig" is a common phrase—so common, in fact, that scavengers on YouTube quickly found two instances of McCain using the term. (Shut down!)

But you know what really gets our girdles in a gridlock? No, it's not even the fact that this distracts from the issues (if it weren't this, it would be the gender of Bristol's baby, or how pretty Michelle Obama smells). It's that people would fabricate sexism, when enough of it exists in real life.

Case in point: The New York Times Sunday Styles (Sunday Styles: where news goes to die in a pile of money) article on Palin's hair.

Hair, of course, is never just about the hair. Intentionally or not, hairstyles help answer the voters' throw-down question: "Who does she think she is?"

Of course. What other politician will be name-checked for hair in this idiotic scrawl? John Edwards and his infamous $400 haircut, right?

Hillary Clinton struggled for years to achieve hair credibility. Now Ms. Palin's upsweep is being praised and derided across the internet. Do her bun and bangs signal that Ms. Palin does not want to attract attention to her appearance—even as she wants to remain presentably attractive?

Oh, yes. The other lady. Hair credibility is, of course, entirely different from real credibility. If you're wondering about those issue thingies, better read the article on Palin's history of cronyism, which remarkably appears in the same newspaper.