Every day online.
When I found this place I scanned the archives reading everything of interest. Now I have the front page bookmarked so that I can see what columns are posted. I read whatever I find interesting.
Since we are on the subject, are the columns that appear online the same as the ones that appear in print? Do I miss anything if I don’t have access to newspapers?
Wait…there’s a column?!
After I found the first Straight Dope book in a store in about 1990, I looked for a local paper that carried the column but couldn’t find one.
A few years later, I did find a paper in Salt Lake that carried it, and for the next couple of years I read the column frequently, but not every week. I simply couldn’t be arsed to go out and snag a copy of the rag it was printed in every week.
When the Dope went online in about 1996, with rare exceptions I was always on the site at least once a week, and usually every day. So it was easy to read the columns as they were posted. That continues to the current. I doubt I’ve missed more than one or two columns since then, and it’s very possible I haven’t missed any. Granted, depending on the subject some of them just get a fast skim, but I think I’ve at least seen them.
Every new column, & sometimes the classics.
I also have all the books.
For many years, I read it in the Montreal Mirror (a free paper devoted mainly to music and movie reviews and ads). Then it was dropped without explanation and I stopped bothering to pick up the paper. When I got a DSL connection (before that I hardly ever used the web, although I have been using email since 1984) I searched for, and found, the STD site and have been reading the weakly columns regularly since.
I read it on paper every time I read the local paper in which it’s carried, Isthmus. I pick up a paper every week but don’t always read it. I don’t think I’ve read a column online, unless someone’s happened to link to it in a thread, in several years.
Don’t have it locally, but I read it online each week. It’s a shame my local alternative paper, “The Pitch”, doesn’t carry it, as it would be right up their alley. I sent them a couple of mails requesting they get it…maybe if more KC-area Dopers did, it would start appearing there.
I used to read it weekly when I lived in San Francisco ('89-'94) and Seattle ('96-'98).
Aren’t you Cecil’s henchman? (Or henchwoman, I guess)
It’s not available in print here; I’d never heard of it until I stumbled upon the site.
Again, it’s not available in print over here. Online I read it every other week or so.
Yes, but in trying to convince a paper to carry the column, you need a lot of voices. Papers need to know that something they run will encourage folks to pick it up every week and see the adverts.
I mean, it’s not like I can threaten to kill folks for not carrying the column, as much as that might be distracting on otherwise grey and dull days.
And look at that, post number 10,000.
Post party!
I’d say I read about three or four of the official columns each year, all online. I’m just more interested in the boards than the columns.
Dear Goddess, no, I don’t need another target painted on me.
I used to read it almost every day online, but I have the SDMB bookmarked now so it takes me to the forums every time I start to type “straight”. I usually check back once a week or so to look at the Threadspotting and Weird Earl’s, but I only read the columns that sound interesting. I’ve never seen it in print.
I read it most weeks, but sometimes have to go back and catch up.
That’s how I have it as well. I always go to the front page, take a quick look and see if there’s something interesting then come to the boards. Every so often I will pick up the City Paper here in DC.
I read the columns online fairly frequently. I have email notification set up and I usually get around to reading all of them (Cecil’s and Mailbag) at least every couple weeks. I can’t recall the last column that bored me, in fact.
I think I’ve only seen the print column twice in my life: Once when I was in Las Vegas and once when I was in Boston. Both those trips were years ago now. Montana simply doesn’t have any paper that carries it to my knowledge, not that I’ve looked very hard to find one, and I don’t leave the state often at all.