Imagine the Southwestern Exposition and Livestock Show without the stock, Basses without bucks, Angelo's without ribs, the Kimbell without art, Sundance without the square. Why bother, you ask?

Fort Worth Star-Telegram readers may be asking themselves that same question when they discover one Monday morning next month that the paper tossed on their doorsteps, unlike virtually every other metropolitan daily published in the United States, won't have a single story on its front page.

"Radical'' is how Star-Telegram senior vice president and executive editor Jim Witt, in a memo to his staff, described the extreme makeover he's herding into print. "No stories out there at all.'' And that's just one of many changes the paper will be making to court what Witt calls "light readers.''

No, this isn't Fort Worth Weekly's idea of a joke about the quality of journalism being practiced by its daily competitor these days. Fact is, most people the Weekly has talked to think the daily has been looking and reading better in the last couple of years than it has in a long time.

All of which makes the stark departure from a deeply rooted journalism tradition -- splashing the day's biggest stories across the front page -- so puzzling. Why fix what ain't broke?

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