The American newspaper.

I am here to study journalism. One of my daily tasks is to read American newspapers, not only to know what is going on out there in the world, but also to gain understanding for how American newspapers are like. What they write and how they write.

My first impression was that the American newspaper is impossible to read. First of all, have you heard of staplers? The pages in The Post are not stapled together, thus the paper always falls apart. This becomes even more of a problem since the paper is organized so that the first page only gives you the beginning of a story and then you have to move on to some other page to read the rest. It is an annoying game of going back and forth.

Secondly, the stories are so looong. I once was told that American writers get paid by word when writing a textbook, which explained why the American textbooks I was reading at uni always were way thicker than the British ones. I am now wondering if this is the case for newspapers too. I kid you not, for one American news story, it goes at least two, or maybe sometimes three, Swedish articles.

These two things were my main issues in the beginning of my Washington Post subscription. But you know what - I am getting used to it. The stapler thing barely bothers me anymore. However, I must admit that I sometimes only read the first part of many of the stories. They often just go on and on and on and ooon...

Me and The Post are starting to get along, however I do still miss my old friend DN a bit.