Today the price of the local metropolitan newspaper went up to $2 from $1.50. It’s too much. I like to read the newspaper while I eat lunch at a restaurant, but it’s too much. Over the last ten years or so, the paper has shrunk pitifully while the price has gone steadily up. And now it’s too much.
I used to work in journalism and am a bit addicted to hardcopy news. I expected to be one of the last people in the world to have a subscription. But I cancelled my subscription 20 years ago due to incompetence and bad attitude by the newspaper staff. I got rid of my landline phone because the newspaper people were harassing me, even though I was a subscriber. There’s a very long list of things they did that really pissed me off.
So it looks like I’ve purchased my last copy of the local newspaper and will be getting all my news online. It makes me sad.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal raised it’s price similarly 6 years or so, but I kept my subscription until a couple of years ago when Sheldon Adelson bought it. Fuck him; he’s not getting my money so he can peddle more of his GOP bullshit.
Fucking great idea letting one of the richest guys in the state buy the only real newspaper in the largest metropolitan area in the state. :rolleyes:
Yup. I only read the physical local rag when someone else has paid for it. And I don’t buy any of the national papers either. I read the Guardian and the Telegraph online.
you go out to eat every day, yet $0.50 more for a newspaper is backbreaking? when’s the last time the price for a paper has gone up?
having worked in the field you should be aware that advertising has been what mainly paid for the publication, and those losses over the years have been enormous.
Mother has dementia, and took pleasure in reading 3 papers a day. Two at $63 a month and the third at $86 a month. When our credit cards were replaced, they didn’t get upgraded. She never noticed. On Sunday, the paper has become smaller than the mid-week papers I would deliver in the Carter era.
Heh, the only time I got habitually phone-harassed by the local paper was when I was working for the local paper. They gave out the paper for free at work! And an $8 an hour job wasn’t worth paying any money to bump up the subscription levels.
I’ve not bothered with reading an actual newspaper (printed hard copy) in a couple of decades or more. However, with “Fake News” under attack, we decided to subscribe to Sunday deliver of NYT. It’s just under $5/week and gives us online access to the NYT all week, plus the crossword app. So I’ve rediscovered the leisurely pleasure of reading the paper on a Sunday morning over coffee and then doing the crossword with my wife.
With most all technology changes, its the older generation that stays with the old. Example: Land lines, newspapers, on site banking, paper checks etc
Once the oldies disappear, so will the old stuff including newspapers. :dubious:
Its all archaic now to the younger generations. :eek::eek:
Also with everything like groceries, they make packaging/portions smaller (and we arent suppose to notice) so goes the price UP. Not sure we have to put up with it but we are right now. :mad:
I dropped my lifelong subscription to the LA Times less than a year after I got internet service. Who the hell needs eight hour old news? I wasn’t reading it anymore.
I’m 55 and still subscribe to a hard copy daily newspaper. Force of habit, I guess. I’ve subscribed all my life. I like it because with print I can see all the stories of the day without searching, even the tiny local stories that don’t appear on the front page of the newspaper web site.
The big new problem is newspapers have no one left to produce content. Our local fish wrap has a home page with six or eight stories, each of which show up at least three times, and stay for days. The overall impression is they are scrambling to fill the screen. The physical paper is down to a 16 page section, 90% of which is wire copy. Local news? Fagetaboutit!
My only luxury is home delivery of the Times every day here in California. I don’t even look at the credit card entry for it. Crossword apps are not like real crosswords anyway. We feel better about the expense because our copy goes to two other families after we are done with it.
We dumped the local paper after they announced that they’d stop delivering on Mondays so we can just get it on line. We do get it on Sunday because of a very cheap offer.
But unless you get the news density of the Times, most papers aren’t worth it.
I like that I’m funding their investigative reporting also.
I don’t know how much reading you need to get you through your lunch hour, but there are plenty of small (and some not so small) FREE papers round these parts. The Chicago Tribune puts out a free version called Red Eye which is around 16 pages and plenty long enough to get you through a Big Mac Meal. Then there is the weekly Chicago Reader which can take an entire week just to read the lead article.
I picked up a Sunday Chicago Tribune subscription through Groupon for a ridiculously low amount. That also gets me behind the paywall for the online edition.
I also get the Washington Post online, their iPhone app is the best one I’ve seen for news. I subscribed right after Trump was elected in order to support real news.
I redeemed miles from an airline I don’t fly often for a subscription to Barrons.
I very rarely buy newspapers at a store or newsstand unless I’m traveling on a long train or plane ride. What a change that is from the 1990s when I’d often buy a local paper and the Wall Street Journal from vending machines.
Update: Today, for the first time, I went out to lunch with no intention of buying a paper newspaper. I was a little apprehensive, but it went fine. I read news and perused a favorite web site (not SDMB) on my phone. I had been concerned about eye strain, but it was not a problem. All in all, a simple, painless switch to the new world.
But I mourn the paper newspaper. It was an important part of my life, and up until a few years ago, it was the most obvious symbol of our precious freedom of the press. Its place in history is inestimable.
So I saved $2 and the trouble of buying a newspaper (they are getting harder and harder to find). My table was pleasantly less cluttered without the paper.
Now if I could just get my new laptop to talk to my printer . . .
I like to have a physical paper to read when I drink coffee in the morning on the weekends. My regional newspaper has a 3-day weekend delivery for about $100/year. Plus, I get full electronic access for the rest of the week. So, I read it electronically four days and get a printed copy over the weekend. Works great for me.
Several years ago, I found that even the annual delivered cost was too much for a constantly shrinking paper. I decided to spend my money on a good online subscription. Now I read news on my tablet.
Besides, the bird died and I didn’t need the dead tree news any longer…