Peter, Your comments are apt. The level of mental rigor, grammar and logic displayed in not only the SMH but most print media is sub standard.
As for the SMH being the only intelligent Sydney paper I'm sure that comment is going to promote some contrary discussion.

The tabloid form of the once proud Sydney Morning Herald is a journalistic disaster. I expect that crocodile stories are on the way, to go alongside the inevitable on-going stories re weight loss diet revolutions.
Vale SMH

Fairfax..... a dead man ( or Woman ) walking.

The faster they hive off their old Rural Press division, the better it will be.

That way their metropolitan papers can wither and die . The regional papers will continue to exist because they don't carry most of the idology or politics of their city cousins.

The new "compact" SMH is a work in progress: hopefully it will change (for the better) over time. Convergence of the online and paper formats are inevitable, and yes, it is hard to find the letters. I note Fairfax has recently employed a hotshot US IT firm to work on their online presence. I also miss some of the journos who have left (though I still wish Sheehan retired). However the SMH remains the only intelligent paper in Sydney.

Peter,

I stopped reading the Sydney Morning Hysterical (SMH) more than 10 years ago - soon after I left university and saw how the real world works.

I have little sympathy for grown men who actually pay for it. Last I heard Ann Summers was still there and calling the whole world misogynist for not supporting Gillard. And they wonder why they are going broke?

It always amazes me how progressives equate 'progressiveness' with 'intelligence'. Maybe it comes from Leninism. Lenin, of course, thought Russia needed a small band of dedicated revolutionaries to lead the masses of peasants and workers into a communist utopia. This elite would by necessity come from the intelligentsia (like him).

Unfortunately, that is where many Leftists (including those at the SMH) stopped reading Russian history. But the story did continue for those of us that bothered. I'll give you a hint - it didn't end happily. There is also that inconvenient truth that the rest of us aren't actually illiterate peasants trapped by poverty and ignorance anymore. We have moved on a bit from the times when progressives were actually progressive. In fact Gillard has taken us back to pre-1983 at the very least.

If you feel my tone is a bit on the sharp side - it's meant to be. After the last few days of this government, to then have someone write that 'progressives' are somehow intelligent and by insinuation the rest of us are somehow not, is just the hight of conceit.

So if we don't read the Herald, what are people expected to read? The Guardian? NY Times? Just pick and choose?

Pity the media laws of Gillard didn't offer us much choice. It was Gillard's way, which seems to be "my way or the highway". And there could have been some kind of sensible regulation to curb a few of the worst media excesses. Once again, a disappointing government (Rudd and Gillard both) which have left us precious little after all the elation of "Kevin 07".

Let's hope Abbott et al. can offer us something worth keeping. This lot hasn't. Twelve years of politicking and back-stabbing.