Newspaper's fall foliage road trip cuts through Whiting...

...but doesn't mention us

Whiting has reason to feel a bit honored and a bit slighted by the Addison Independent's fall foliage road trips. Five trips were mapped out in the newspaper's special "Fall Foliage 2012" edition. The 3-hour trip cuts right through the center of Whiting, yet the newspaper did not mention the town's name. Also neglected in the same writeup were our neighbors to the north in the pretty town of Cornwall.

The road trip description begins as follows: "From Middlebury, take Route 30 south to Sudbury, [see, no mention of Cornwall or Whiting, just POOF you're in Sudbury] where you pick up Route 73 and travel west to Larrabee's Point on Lake Champlain. You may want to cruise the lake at Mount Independence leaving from Larrabee's Point, which is home to the Fort Ticonderoga ferry. Continue north on Route 7A passing through historic Shoreham..."

From there, the three-hour road trip heads north on Route 22A to Bridport, then west on Route 135 to Chimney Point, north and east on Route 17 to the West Addison General Store, north on Jersey Street along Lake Champlain nearly to Basin Harbor, east and south on Basin Harbor Road into Vergennes, south on Route 22A into Addison, back on Route 17 east and then Route 23 south back into Middlebury.

(By the way, the Independent recently ran an editorial describing the problems it has had with the printing of its late-week broadsheet edition. Those were apparently related to the switching of printing companies. One week, the newspaper was printed with large white margins at the top and bottom of the pages. The next week, the pages were noticeably shrunk, with some type becoming virtually unreadable.)

Magnifying glass sales skyrocket!

The twice weekly Addison Independent newspaper apparently is doing its part for ocular health by incorporating a vision test with yesterday's issue of the newspaper. In addition to checking our eyesight with the microscopic type used in that issue, the Independent is doing its part for newsprint and ink conservation efforts. Or... perhaps somebody over there is screwing up the layout... badly.

Readers of the Independent may recall that, last week at this time, we received a newspaper with vast unprinted areas at the tops and bottoms of the pages. This week, smaller pages AND tiny, little type.

Yesterday's paper (left) has dramatically smaller type than the paper released three days earlier (right).

I'm guessing this all stems from the Independent's former unusual practice of publishing two different size newspapers - a tabloid size early in the week and a standard sheet late in the week. It looks as though someone is tinkering with the layout, either because they have no idea what they're doing or because they are trying to adjust the end of week newspaper to more closely match the one put out at the beginning of the week.

Advertisers cannot be happy about the situation. Those who purchased ads for the end of week issue have had them shrunk. That probably hasn't impacted the big advertisers - a full page ad is still a full page ad. But some of the smaller ads have been reduced to the point of being unreadable.