Can we talk? I know there are reviews here that both love and hate USA Today, and I understand that just one more epinion probably won't change your mind if you've already decided whether or not to read USA Today. But if you're still undecided, take a look at the paper -- any issue -- and I think you'll find that the people on the "can't stand it" side of the fence are the ones with the smart money.

I'm currently out of town on a business trip, and I'm staying at a Holiday Inn Select. I tell you this because if you're also a business traveler, you're probably aware that Holiday Inn has this nasty habit of leaving complimentary copies of USA Today under you door each morning (at least I get an epinion out of it without actually having to waste my money on it!)

As I scanned through the paper this morning, it quickly became obvious to me why I always opt for a good local paper over USA Today. Frankly, USA Today is one of those products that is its own worst enemy. While I found dozens of reasons in this one issue to dislike them, here's five that I think make a good case against USA Today.

1. What's Your Stand on the Issue?
The best reason to avoid USA Today is because they print so many articles about things that have no importance to anyone anywhere in the world. The worst example of this kind of nonsense is smack dab on the front page of today's issue!

The front-page cover story is about how some people in church prefer to stand during prayers while others kneel. No, wait!! I'm serious! I swear! I am not making this up!!! They really did waste the most prominent spot in the paper on such a silly article!

Yes, of course you might have thought that any professional news editor would have found some story more newsworthy than whether some rebel with a cause in Mississippi wants to stand up during a church service, but NNOOOOO!! Not at USA Today (motto: "where trivial makes headlines").

2. Hello Captain Obvious!
When USA Today isn't busy printing things that are totally unimportant and useless to the whole of humanity, they're busy telling you what everyone and his dead grandmother already knew.

Take another gander at page 1. Down in the bottom corner are the results of a commissioned gallup poll. SURPRISE! Americans don't really like having to file tax returns. Whoever woulda thunk it!? (Tomorrow's poll: do American's like getting bonked on the head with a 9-iron?)

Want another example? Take a look at page 1 of the "Life" section. Down in the bottom corner...what's that "Snapshot" say? That's right! 67% of adults who eat cereal drink the milk when they're done eating while 25% dump it out. I would never have guessed that those would be the two top answers. Of course, USA Today ignored the real story, which is that 8% do something else...what else there could be, I shudder to ask...

3. Stayin' Alive, Stayin' Alive...Oooh Oooh Oooh...
Just when you thought it was safe to give that last leisure suit to Goodwill, along comes yet another USA Today issue with a big article in the "Life" section about yet another made-for-TV movie that makes you glad remotes have an OFF button.

Does anybody really care that ABC plans to lose tonights ratings war by airing a show about Bobby Fisher and Billie Jean King?

If that weren't bad enough, the other "Life" cover story is about the real-life Erin Brockovitch being upset because she has mold in her house (the poor dear). (Insert graphic sounds of vomitting here.)

Am I the only person who finds it sad that with a whole world full of fascinating people doing interesting things, USA Today can do no better than this kind of fluff? Heck, not even People magazine wastes ink on this kind of rubbish.

4. Funny Money
The "Money" section has got to be the worst business and financial section to ever dare show itself to the light of day.

Many of the stories are totally worthless, usually because they fall into either the "who cares" or the "captain obvious" categories. Take the cover story in today's Money section. Workers have sometimes saved their co-workers lives -- maybe they threw a lifeline to someone who fell off a pier, or performed CPR when their Big-Mac-eating cohort keeled over.

Is that going to help me make sound business decisions? I don't think so. The story could just as well have been about how neighbors sometimes call the fire department when the house next door starts spewing suspicious flames and smoke through a hole in the roof, or how motorists sometimes call 911 when an 18-wheeler squashes a Toyota. To call such stories "sophomoric" would be to insult sophomores, so I won't do it...

To make matters worse, I don't see any information that would be useful. There's no commodities prices, no foreign currency exchange rates, no stock market prices or previous week summaries -- in short nothing in terms of content! It's like a complete diet of empty calories!

5. Local News
Of course you can't do a creditable job covering local news when you're trying to be a national newspaper, but for crying out loud, can't you at least have something newsworthy in the little tidbits you do print!

USA Today has about a half-page daily that's just short one paragraph highlights of happenings state-by-state. The problem is that these things are almost never noteworthy nor even very important. They certainly don't give you a flavor for what might be happening in a state.

Some of these snippets look like they could have been written a year or two ago and then just plopped in today because the timing is right. Take a look at Texas -- the snippet is that Governor Rick Perry might run for re-election, and if he does, he might try appealling to latino voters. And this is news because....???

I'm sorry folks, but I just don't see the news value here...to me that's just about as informative as telling me that Houston meteorologists speculate that it might be easier to read a paper in the park tomorrow during daylight hours than it would tonight at midnight.

Let's look at some other states...hmmm. Several thousand people attended easter services in Washington, D.C. yesterday (shocking!) Minnesota officials think their police might be using racial profiling (No! You think so??)

Ugly Papers Aren't Funny
Not only does USA Today print garbage and useless trivia, they make it look ugly to boot!

USA Today gets a lot of attention for its use of color and its extensive use of graphics, both of which are supposed to be inviting to a reader, but I sure wish they'd do something about their ugly type faces. The type looks fat and it's all squished together, both vertically and horizontally (if you're into type, it looks like a New Century Schoolbook font that's got no leading and very tight kerning). It's a good thing the layout people at USA Today aren't in the restaurant business -- customers would be handed a bowl of "food" with all their courses dumped in, one on top of the other.

Even those widely praised color splashes are sometimes done badly. Today's front page has a block about the U.S. spy plane crew, but the text is badly reversed on the blue background -- there's a dark outline around the letters that makes the whole thing look like its shaking. It reminds me of those greeting cards with the shaky text that says something witty like "too much sex causes your eyesight to go bad". I wish I had such a good excuse...

Friends Don't Let Friends Buy USA Today
Yeah, there are a lot of reviews about USA Today here on epinions, and it might be a waste of my time to add yet one more review to the mix. But you guys are my friends, and I don't want you to make the mistake of having to wade through so much muck just to dig out the couple of nuggets that might be lurking in there somewhere.

Even if you disagree with me about the quality of USA Today's "reporting", I think there's something we can both agree on -- who wants to start off a day without a comics page?

Recommended: No

Describe the newspaper's political views: It is conservative