I rant therefore I am

I used to like The New Times newspaper-and indeed did write for them for a couple of years until very recently- but I'm growing more and more disillusioned. In the past few months the quality of the paper has been in a free-fall. What other paper has a caption like "Gorillas should not deny human beings their rights?" or expressions like "an eerie of silence" or "a zero shot" or "frame them up?" But it's not just the grammatical howlers or the fact that they are setting up their parallel language inspired by English. It's the general lack of quality and the overwhelming sense of monotony and right now the paper has reached a kind of zen-like state of mediocrity. Take for example the features page. On any given day it's a safe bet that the article in that section is going to be on one of the following subjects:
1. "Paul Rusesabagina (of 'Hotel Rwanda' fame) is an idiot". Come on- this is preaching to the choir! Everyone reading the paper and with an ounce of sense knows that this man is an utter moron. To write 300 articles about him in the space of a few months is just not necessary and is merely giving him a platform to keep spouting off his nonsense.
2. "Rwanda is like totally going to kick ass as a new member of the East African community": Yes we know this is a good thing, but unless you are bringing something new to the table, why keep writing the same article over and over again? I really don't get it.
3. "Africa's predicament is all because of those evil colonialists and if it wasn't for them, Africa would be heaven on earth": I wouldn't even know where to start with this argument but I can sum it up in two words: It's horseshit.
The sheer monotony aside, why don't we tackle international issues on that page? How does the New Times intend to foster intellectual debate if they won't even look outside their backyard? There's a war going on in Iraq you know and there's a whole host of issues going with 'the war on terror' but it seems the paper has nothing to say about such issues (even though for example our neighbour Kenya has been involved in the US's dirty work of 'extraordinary rendition). What about hot topics like Mugabe and Chavez? What about the effects of globalization on Africa (without resorting to the whole 'cultural imperialism' rant mode they employ on the rare occasion they deal with this kind of topic)Where are topics like history or the arts? Or science for that matter?
The result of this is clear in the letters page where the readers have been so battered with the same topics over and over again that they've basically thrown in the towel and end up writing things like ' Keep up the good work new times!' and 'Let's all work together in unity and prosperity'.Infact every single day, the letters page has a variation on that theme- 'lets work hard/together/in unity...etc' Why on earth are such inane views published day after day and week after week? I'm sure readers have more interesting things to say but the fact is the paper is stifling them by denying them a wider arena of topics and more in-depth discussions. There is also certainly a lot about Rwanda's story that is being left unsaid. If you read the letters page in The New Vision or The Daily Nation, you can see the difference and its the difference between night and day- there are serious, intellectual debates going on there. As the only daily in this country, The New Times needs to foster a similar climate of knowledge and debate.