Did the half-sheet on today’s paper upset you?

The unusual wrap-around page on today’s Post-Dispatch is known as a spadia. 

Several readers called this morning to call it something else.

“Are you certifiably crazy? What is that weird thing covering the front page, about STLtoday.com?”

Another caller:

“You obliterated the front page. The proud banner of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch…half of Louis. I mean it’s disgraceful. The New York Times would never do anything like that. The Washington Post would never do that.”

Another:

“The Post has reached a new low with that front page entrapment with an overlap that I had to cut off. Then I had a loose page in the back.”

Spadias are an advertising tool that appear from time to time. Most spadias in the Post-Dispatch wrap around the comics.

(Dictionary definition: A page wrapped around the spine of a periodical or one of its sections so as to appear as a narrow flap or partial page.)

Today’s spadia — a users guide to STLtoday.com — was unusual. Most spadias are a full page folded in half — half covering the front of a section and half covering the back. But the one in today’s paper was a full page and a half. (Half covering the front page, a full page at the page.) And the really unusual element was that the inside of the back page had news stories on it.

Often readers remove spadias and continue reading the section. If readers did that today, they missed the news on Page A7.

And that ticked off several readers. (I heard from 10.)

“What kind of idiot would design a front page that you can’t even hold the paper open without the back page falling off? Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

“Don’t put a half page on the paper. You can’t read the paper and hold it properly.”

“I want to complain about the half sheet. If I cut it out, it leaves the back page hanging.” (Two references to cutting it off. That struck me as an odd thing to do.)

Many of these readers also complained about the content of the spadia. Several thought it incompatible to ask readers of the Post-Dispatch to also read STLtoday.com.

That’s a key goal of our company: To increase circulation, readership and online audiences. Every day, dozens if not hundreds of elements in the print edition try to drive readers to STLtoday.

“Maybe I should have saved all this money from all these years of subscription, and saved enough money to maybe buy a used computer.” He went on: “Especially advertising that none of those cyber-space boobies would even have read.”

So, if you’re reading this, you might consider yourself in a new class.