How about Hertfordshire News Review?

I can't see the point.

Not in going on, obviously I've spent a lot of time working out that one. Or in work, because I find it fulfllling.

It's the bloody London News Review, which is starting to turn out to be an almighty waste of time, money and trees. The plan, I thought, was to get a magazine in the shops, and hit the mainstream, and get the Friday Thing word out to the non-email minded public.

What's happened instead, is none of the mainstream will stock it, thanks to the major rule that nothing thought-provoking is allowed to be sold on shelves in the newsagents. So the content that they would have sent out by email to subscribers, now also arrives in printed form on the same day, using old fashioned snail mail. There's a few extra bits, but to be honest they're not very good. So I'm not really convinced I know what I'm paying a subscription for.

Whilst I've been nagging all my friends to give it a try, not being in any shops, it's pretty difficult to get hold of. And for those of us who don't live in London, the title can be a little alienating. It's not even that much about London.

As I'm on a rant, the glossy issue zero looked pretty good- the new format looks like the kind of cheap thing student 'newspapers' (like the one I used to run) churn out.

What really sucks, too, is that this whole project has just reduced the quality of the content in the friday thing. Still not bad, but still, it's been better.

I'm just a little disappointed. Rather than pay for a subscription, I could just hit 'print'. Painful as it may be, they've got a month to get their act together, or I'm cancelling.

I need something else to believe in. Maybe I'll just drop out and fall in with scientology or the new McDonald's Quorn Premiere.