We have one city newspaper, but several years ago it was bought out by some Big Regional Paper Company and they fired everyone except one staff member and the rest is AP fill. You can pay them $25 a month to get it delivered to your house, but it is worse than useless unless you have birds.
We have a local alt-weekly that has taken up the mantle and is free. Their journalism is surprisingly good and in-depth about local politics and events. Covid has hit them hard, but I hope they survive.
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal. The Urinal-Shitnal couldn’t get a scoop if the story was their own building was on fire. I pay $13 a month for 7 days a week. It’s barely good enough for something to read while I take my morning dump. And the plastic bags they come in are good for picking up my dogs crap.
West Bend Daily News. It’s the town I grew up in. But I get copies of it from one of my siblings who still lives there. I think they pay $58 every 3 months which is insane for what it is. It only comes out 6 days a week, no Sunday edition. So much for “daily”.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch is $2.00 daily, $2.75 (I think) Sundays.
Oddly enough, today’s Thanksgiving edition of the paper, which came jam-packed with ads, flyers and special sections, was marked up to $5.00.
The Lafayette (Indiana) Journal & Courier costs $2 at the newsstand most days and $3 on Sunday, but yesterday’s and today’s holiday editions went for five bucks each. Four sections – local news (8 or 10 pages), national news and comics (4 pages), life (8 or 10 pages), and sports (4 pages) most days – plus comics and real estate sections, Parade magazine, and occasional bonus features on Sundays. Five or six locally-based reporters (one of whom will be retired as of December 1), with Gannett affiliates providing the world and national stories.
Here in the far north coast of California (the Eureka area) we have the Times-Standard. Single edition price of $1. Sunday I believe is $2.50. The T-S publishes daily except Monday. Typical weekday page count is 12 in two sections.
I personally enjoy the T-S and think it provides decent coverage of local events and national news. What I find irritating are those individuals who read the T-S but then describe it as the Times-Substandard. If you think it’s that bad quit reading it.
I often wonder what those same people would do if the T-S ceased publication and we were left without any newspaper at all.
Here in my corner of the middle of nowhere, PA you can choose from two papers covering two different towns in the region. Get either one or the other or both. The one costs $1.00 and the other costs $0.75 at the newsstand. Dunno if it’s cheaper to get it delivered, I only read it if I’m in one of the local dinors and it’s on the counter for anyone to read and I only buy papers when I’m painting or doing something that needs a cheap throwaway drop cloth.
We have the Suffolk News-Herald, which is free and supported by ads. About 12 pages long, every Tuesday through Sunday, not including the ad sheets. Mostly has local news, weather, and sports.
We have a free neighborhood paper, the Nagid. They make a point to hire local paper deliverers and I get it on my doorstep in the rare times a local deliverer is available. It’s all ad supported and a decent organization overall and I hope they stick around.
Small town with a weekly paper - subscription costs $34 a year. I think it’s $1 if you pick one up though.
Honolulu had two dailies when the wife and I were going to school here almost 30 years ago – the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and the Honolulu Advertiser. One was the morning paper and the other the evening paper. While we were away, the two merged to become the once-a-day Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Not a bad paper, but I never buy it. I ride the bus, and they sporadically have free copies for the passengers to pick up at the front of the bus. Got one just yesterday, and I see the current price is $3 on Oahu and $3.25 on the outer islands.
I’m in western Canada. Our newspaper costs 31.50 per month and publishes 6 editions per week, all on line with 5 hard copies delivered door to door Tue-Sat. It’s published by Post Media news which is partly American owned with ties to the Republican party. It has an obvious centre-right bias giving the best “spin” on right wing provincial and federal right leaning parties.
Seattle Times, Sunday paper delivery and all-access daily digital, $5 per month.
In the UK, local and even regional newspapers have been declining for years, what with the growth of online and social media. A lot of local papers merged titles or just back-offices, and went free-to-audience, covered by advertising. And content has got thinner and thinner: there would be detailed coverage of local council debates and activities, court cases schools, sports and social groups, and of course weddings (and woe betide them if they spelt a name wrong). Not any more.
Covid lockdowns have accentuated the process.
Across the whole of London, there’s the (free) Evening Standard, which is still pretty bulky, but dependent on its property advertising. In my particular part of London, there’s a weekly pale shadow of a “proper” local paper (a five -minute flick-through) and a fortnightly “hyper-local” that used to have news from the area as a whole, but is now a collection of puff pieces for businesses in and around the sponsoring commercial centre (and which hasn’t appeared during the latest lockdown).
I checked the subscription prices for The Columbus Dispatch (where we had 7-day delivery for many years) and the only option I get for delivery plus digital access is about $26 for thirteen weeks (presumably the price goes up after that).
Given that 1) we’ve moved, 2) the Dispatch shifted its printing plant to Indianapolis so they perform even more poorly on getting late-breaking news and sports into the print edition, and 3) they just announced they’re letting the editorial page staff go, cutting way back on editorials and softening the tone of editorials and op-eds because people don’t like “division”, I don’t anticipate being a subscriber again.
I’d be gone too. That’s a dead giveaway that the news will be filtered also and not in a good way.
Being in a similar situation, I found that the New York Times digital serves me very well and can be very reasonable in cost. I have a subscription that is well less than a dollar a week and is more reading, news and opinion than I can get to in a day. The Times covers Nebraska news better than my namby-pamby local daily which toadies to our bright red governor. So consider that, they have a great Black Friday sale going on at the moment.
Interesting that big papers with national and even international readership (think New York Times) still seem to be going ok.