What is so wrong with embracing your old whiteness?

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The Globe and Mail went through a redesign this week. A complete overhaul. A remodeling. A renovation. A change for the sake of change. A super-duper makeover.

The powers that be in charge of that tomb/newsroom decided, in their infinite wisdom, that this was needed in order to get those crazy kids off of Facebook and back between pages of black and white newsprint, where they belong.

So they gave us young newspaper readers what we want:

And what we want, apparently, is USA Today. Only without so much colour. Colour only distracts us from the Storm of Confusion stirring in Ottawa.

Also, because we are just that stupid, we now have thick black lines to guide us from one story to the next. Do you know what this breakthrough means? It means that Canada’s National Newspaper now has so much watery black ink on its pages that it cannot be used as a tissue or a cumrag. It can only be used a newspaper, and an ugly one at that. Even your dog would piss on your leg before relieving itself on this venerated publication, because he’d end up with thick black lines of ink on his paws.

(I should also inform you that the front page has more colour than almost every other page in the newspaper. So don’t go thinking that those full colour pictures will mitigate the HUGE FUCKING BLACK LINE effect somewhat. It only gets worse inside).

Aside from that, it’s a stroke of old-white-dudes-nearing-retirement-age genius. Except the headlines are too small. And they are trying to lead me like a fucking dog from story to story, even if I don’t want to go there. And they seem to think they will be able to sustain a Life section with a different theme every day for more than a couple of months. And there are like sixty teasers and kickers above and below each story. If I wanted to be teased and kicked multiple times before my first coffee, I’d find myself a really kinky girl, not a recently redesigned national newspaper.

But the worst thing is the lurid vibe that it gives off — like a parent who has just seen the kind of movies and video games her children are playing, but feels compelled to embrace them in order to prove her hipness. It’s as though they despise the level that we are on, but are more than willing to sink to it for the sake of the under-45 revenue.

Oh, Globe and Mail, you will never, EVER be hip, and you could have embraced that. You could have remained respected and aloof and above all this newspaper-war/industry-dying/must-revitalize bullshit that every other paper is swimming in. You could have lived as the Old Grey Mare forever, with your honourifics and huge pages that prohibit plebes who ride streetcars from even attempting to open you.

Instead, you sold out, dipshits. Now your paper looks like ass, the rest of the ink-stained wretches are laughing at you, your longtime readers are wondering what happened … and me? As a young, news-savvy, paper-reading male under 30 years of age? I’m walking right the fuck past that little Global Village you set up on Bay Street this week, and pulling back in disgust from those rejects with inky hands trying to hand me the Canadian version of U.S.A. today.

When I see Valpy or Blatchford handing those out, and explaining why they approve of your redesign, I’ll take a second look.

Until then, you suck. A little bit more than you did when you were just a paper for old people who care about minute details of policy. Though I have a sneaking suspicion that’s still who you are — you’re just wearing a butt-ugly mask.

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