NP: Steely Dan, Showbiz Kids

[Yes, listening to the Dan is my own little tribute to Mr. Rather's exit from the network news machine. See, because they have the same name! Sort of.]

Okay, I think I figured out why I mysteriously stopped getting the Tribune's Daywatch column many, many months ago.

Tribune Daywatch is your daily news briefing, delivered to newspaper home delivery subscribers or online-only subscribers by e-mail each weekday morning.

I have a registered account at chicagotribune.com, and I generally don't have a problem with giving my personal information for online access to the news, at least for sites I visit frequently. It's a trade-off, pure and simple.

But I can't quite figure out if being a registered user is the same as what they call an "online-only subscriber." Seeing as how my subscription to said newsletter ceased, despite a couple of attempts to get it going again, my gut tells me that, in typical Tribune fashion, they'll only e-mail you the news if you already get the news in paper form. This seems, on the one hand, totally absurd, but on the other, entirely consistent with the Trib's ass-backward view of their main product.

I could be wrong, though. Maybe they just blacklisted me because I keep bitching about this sort of thing. Damn you, Google!