No, the title is not some military abbreviation. It stands for Same Old Crappy Paper. I am referring to none other than the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
It's latest trick was to run a huge feature story on the front page of the Sports section about a college that has very little readership in the Saint Louis metropolitan area. But, what is really amateur on the paper's part was doing it on a day when the university with more alums than anyone else in the region played a Big XII Conference basketball game. Instead of full coverage of the University of Missouri's game against Baylor, the rag published a boring feature on the coach at the University of Illinois.
Now, you might say, but Illinois has a better program. My response as a professional journalist would be fine. Run the feature on a day when the larger share of readers want to see it. Instead, the Post ran a small story about Mizzou on the far right column, where the eye did not want to go naturally but rather was attracted to the huge photo of Bruce Weber and his minions.
When will the S*O*C*P realize this is one of the reasons why it keeps losing readers.
