Run down on local papers

Arizona Republican : editor was Dan Quayle's uncle. Dan's brother also was an editor for the Wickenburg Sun. Always manages to endorse every Republican candidate in competitve races.

East Valley Mesa Tribune: even more Republican than the AZ Republican. They run Prickles City cartoon, which is basically a liberal bashing cartoon, and Vance David Hanson's article (or whatever his name is). He's a big time fascist, neocon war lover, who oddly still thinks Iraq was the right thing to do.

Tucson Daily Star: Best paper in the state. Actual to god liberals on the editorial staff. Talk about moral values like helping the poor, and healing the sick. This may the last paper aside from the Minneapolis Star that is a liberal paper.

Flagstaff's daily rag ? Don't remeber the name, even though two of my buddies worked there in the early 90's. Good paper, all the national stories are taken from the wire service, but the editorials were balanced, and generally fact based.

Prescott Daily Courrier - In the most conservative corner of AZ, we got the most conservative rag. They run the drunk driver Mallard Fillmore cartoon, and run all the old Nixon hands' columns. The only use for this one is cartoons, local news, movie times, and to use under bird cage.

I get the Az Republic(an) as well, mostly because I like a daily newspaper, grew up in a household where we always had one, and was a paperboy in the old days . . . . I guess . . . habit . . . The Phoenix Gazette was better, the old afternoon paper, even though owned by the same folks, I dunno, maybe I liked their sports writers better . . . but not many two-paper towns, or ones with an afternoon daily anymore . .

For balance, I recommend:

Weekly edition of the Washington Post

Washington Monthly magazine

U.S. News and World Report (or Newsweek if you must, better than Time, Inc.).

We have a small town paper mailed to us as well . . . and I don't know, but maybe the Tucson Daily Star would mail you a copy?  Might be a day late, but . . .

Online stuff is all over the map, but you can access some of the NYT for free, columns mostly cost a bit . . . some stores have hard copy NYT for sale (our AJ's does for example).  Then, of course, you can flip around the web all day with CNN, abcnews, msnbc.com, etc. etc.  Greg Palast online is free; also many columnists at: www.alternet.orgcolumnists -- like Molly Ivins is there.  Another of my favorites is: www.huffingtonpost.com.  There are many more, the Center for American Progress, the Nation, Salon, MoveOn.org, etc.  You could possibly get some friends who pay for online content to do some clever copying and pasting of columns to send you perhaps?

The more I list online stuff, the more I wonder why bother with the newspaper at all?  comics?  ads?  travel section?  Who knows?  We know what we don't know. . .  or it's an unknown known, or a known unknown . . . Nobody knows.  Write on.

--KZ