Best Newspaper From Outside Chicago

What is the best newspaper that downstate Illinois has to over?

On edit: I left two spots blank and I can add to them in case I overlooked two newspapers.

eom

I have to pick up a Pantagraph. I find their quality to be far above all the rest of the papers I've read downstate.

murielm99 is right about the Register Star, though. Six out of seven days, some right-wing nutjob columnist (Cal Thomas, Maggie Gallagher, George Will, etc.) is foaming at the mouth in the editorial pages, and if the syndicated columnists aren't in there, some local idiot is writing about how bad liberals are and why it's wonderful to be a Bible-beating, gay-hating, Muslim-torturing Christian Republican.

I have no real long term experience with several of these papers, but man, the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette is one coservative rag. I call it the News Gazoo, and there are only a couple of the reporters over there that I don't view as absolute tools.

I refuse to spend a cent with them and I have not purchased a ews Gazette for over a year. I wait and read it after somebody buys it or else I read it online. Te best thing ever did was cancel that subscrption.


Laura

I was reading the Daily Journal (Kankakee) one day and this reporter really pissed me off. I usually don't send letters to the editor for downstate papers because I have a feeling they just throw away editorials from Chicago, but she got me to write one. She said that there had been enough whining about the election and it was time to get over it. The best line was, and I quote, "Anyone who has only an election to get upset over really should be grateful." What a total lack of understanding of what goes into elections. I can't believe she gets a public forum. It's not like the Cubs lost a game, this is real life! Elections can hurt or help families struggle to survive. Clearly she lives in Bush's privatized America and doesn't no anyone living from paycheck to paycheck. What a typical Republican elitist.

Because, well, I can find it at Starbucks.

Here's the thing: You can tell that they are really a bunch of liberals, but that someone somewhere has the authority to tell them not to print anything that Democrats would actually like - or more pointedly, not to upset the local cavemen.

Thus, we get a lot of national reprints from AP, and the local writers stay away from anything that could be construed as even mildly controversial. Well - with one exception - anything a LaHood does gets 11 pages of free print, and they glorify him like a Fundy at his fourth church picnic of the week.

On the whole, a useful but not very intriguing paper. On the other hand, my cockatiel is quite fond of it. I always set it in the cage so that any pictures of the * royal family are facing up, so Barney gets target practice.