Retired Mercury News ad executive Lou Alexander (pictured) writes about the changes at his old paper in the year since Dean Singleton’s MediaNews Group took over, such as the elimination of the Sunday Perspective section, the reduction in pages and questionable story choices for the front page. Just as interesting as his comments are those he’s heard from other former Merc employees. Such as:

• “Some fine work has been done on local issues, but not nearly enough to make the paper a must-read for people locally. Unless the Mercury News can do this — that is, make itself so vital to local and regional residents that they feel that have to subscribe to it — it will continue in its death spiral.”

• “Bringing 1B news onto the 1A spot has good and bad days. Today (9/21/07), for instance, the biggest story, the lead story, is the reopening of Original Joe’s Restaurant???? This is the best that can be done in the heart of Silicon Valley?”

• “I don’t like the new Biz section. It’s too rah-rah looking for my taste.”

• “Particularly nettlesome are the quality control problems. I see so many mistakes in the articles that I think surely no one is proofreading them anymore. Also, I see more problems such as a note that a story is continued on page 2B, for example, when in actuality it continues on page 4B. (Sometimes, the rest of the story is nowhere to be found!)”