Newsday

Let's talk about Newsday. If you don't live in the NYC area or NY/CT/NJ for that matter, you may not know that Newsday is Long Island's daily newspaper. It's not bad, I guess, it's got all the things a paper needs to have to be a, ya know, paper; op-ed, real news, comics, sports (LI LOVES THE JETS), and what I go onto newsday.com for: the Saturday crossword.

If you do crosswords, it's the hardest one out there, harder than the NYT Saturday crossword. But if you don't do crosswords, who cares.

What I wanted to rabbit on about was something far more important. Yes, veryyyy important. Every time I frequent newsday.com, I'm greeted by one of two things (three if you count actual news):

1. One of those full page "ads" that blocks you from seeing the web site until you close it, except in newsday.com case it's a notice that you can't access the site unless you're an OptimumOnline customer (cable? really?) or already a print subscriber. The first time I encountered this, I told them "No, I don't live in NY. Yes, I want to use the site." and BAM they gave me a user name and access. That lasted about 3 days, at which point I got an email (IN ALL CAPS; WHICH IF YOU'VE NEVER GOTTEN AN EMAIL IN ALL CAPS IS REALLY ANNOYING, AND YOUR FIRST THOUGHT IS THAT IT'S PROBABLY SPAM) that told me they had figured me out! The jig was up! The Newsday gestapo had figured out my ploy...I would have to pay for access because I neither bought their lousy cable, nor did I get the print edition.
Anyway, to make a long story short, I ignored this, and nothing happened. Well, apparently, I didn't know that this was a new thing to newsday.com and that it failed...MISERABLY. Check it out. If AJ and I get more than 35 readers over 3 months, we can declare ourselves better than Newsday...what a great accomplishment!

2. Last, but not least, is the newsday.com title bar. The title bar says "newsday.com" followed by something catchy about the news in twitter/facebook status update fashion. So today, they had this:

I know what you're thinking, you want that for your blog. Imagine if you were the only one who knew why K-Rod wasn't at Mets camp (was it substance abuse? holding out for more on your contract? Whatever it is, I need to know about K-Rod). Drum roll, please:

In other news, Francisco Rodriguez still is not in camp. His workouts consist of playing catch with his brother at his home here in Port St. Lucie. The Mets have their fingers crossed that he will be cleared after another doctor's visit on Monday. For pink eye, three weeks of contagion has got to some kind of record. Maybe I can check in with the CDC later today.

Pink eye. Yes, a major online newspaper had a twitter update for pink eye. They have officially turned into a middle-aged, stay-at-home mom who twitters too much about their precious son, "Johnny can't make it to school today. Pulled out the Similasan for his pink eye!"

I shouldn't gripe. I keep my eye glued to those statuses. I'll post the funny ones (Yes, they get funnier than K-Rod with pink eye!) in the future...