One thing I like about The Japan Times is that it is short and to the point, with a satisfactory cross section of news and views from home and abroad. With just 22 pages it is easy to carry around and over the course of the day I read most of it. Well, not the ridiculous wastage of sports which, properly speaking, rates as a big zero on the mental radar of intelligent people, but most of the rest of it, anyway.
sk,1 I hate to see inserts in the newspaper, because if anything is that important then space should be made for it within the body of the publication to begin with. I think inserts pander to people who don't know how to use a newspaper. I mean, those who do not know how to find information, or forgot how to find it, or who were just never taught how to find it, thus requiring information to be specially separated and handed to them like a mother feeding her baby, or a nurse attending an invalid. Those few inserts that occasionally come along find their way immediately into my rubbish bin, sometimes with an accompanying curse to cement my condemnation of their depravity, and sometimes rent in two to announce my judgment with authority.
So I disagree with Ami Shukla's eulogy of "thick and colorful pull-out" sections that appear in the weekend editions of some papers ("Beef-up basic content," April 24). The last thing readers need is a 100-page newspaper (on weekends or any other day), and as for The Japan Times, I find the basic content just fine for now.