The Arizona Republic's parent company, Gannett, is starting to look like the Black Knight in Monty Python's Holy Grail, losing an arm here, a leg there --- except no one's claiming these are just flesh wounds.
On the heels of a companywide 10 percent cut in personnel last month, Gannett told it's employees last week to take a week off without pay. Today Also last week, the company announced it will close the doors at the Tucson Citizen by March unless someone buys the newspaper.
But the brain trust at the Republic has come up with one way to stave off unemployment: Become a marketing subsidiary of the Arizona Cardinals.
You may have noticed the 9/11-scale coverage of the Cardinals big win yesterday against the Eagles, which itself was the culmination of several weeks of blatant boosterism.
Now the paper is selling prints of its Cardinals photos for prices that would make Ansel Adams blush. Twenty bucks for a lousy 5X7? Thirty bucks for an 8X10? That's information highway robbery! And look at the way the Republic promotes the overpriced prints prominently on its home page:
Every dollar helps, apparently.
