The OC Weekly has long had the kind of relationship with the Orange County Register that you'd expect an irreverent weekly to have with the "establishment"paper in its coverage area. But something just awful has happened in the past few years: OCR has been sucking so profoundly, the weekly's jokes stopped being ... well, jokes.

To wit: OC Weekly began publishing a "Death Watch" for the paper of record, which would be a cute idea if the paper weren't really, seriously dying. It's the kind of feature that in another part of the country would be filled with sophomoric jokes about the decline in the newsroom staff's pulchritude. Instead, it's breaking news about content-sharing deals with Singleton.

Well, when the Reg finally does give up the ghost, at least OC readers will have the Weekly.

Update:

A Tipster tells us "That dude at the weekly isn't breaking news, he's printing conjecture about which he doesn't really know all the facts. not that knowing all the facts is ever a reason for an alternative weekly or a blog not to run with a story, of course...."

Meow.