Poorly executed newspaper price increase

I was recently informed that my monthly newspaper subscription to the Arizona Republic was increasing from $18.99 per month to $24 per month.  

The benefit to me for this 25% increase in cost?  I get access to their digital content.  

Whoop de doo.  I don't currently access their digital content.  That's why I read the newspaper.  So I can get my news - and comics - in one place with my breakfast.  I prefer that to having to click links, back up, click other links.  

I wasn't asked if I wanted this digital content.  I wasn't offered a print-only option.  I was just informed that my subscription would increase.  

I've commented before on the impending demise of print media.  My newspaper is already laughably slim.  We're the sixth largest American metropolis, yet 3 days a week the newspaper is the size of my home town paper.  Which had 30,000 residents at the time I lived there. 

Even now, at the end of many articles is the notation to go to their web site for further information.  If I need to go to the Internet for sufficient information, then why do I need the print edition at all? 

I like my newspaper.  I tried doing without and suffered withdrawal.   But this heavy-handed stab at "improving" my media experience has left a bad taste.  Additionally, I resent the tactic of charging me more for the Thanksgiving edition because it is bigger - from ads they get paid for.  

I've tolerated the Thanksgiving inequity with a grumbling acceptance.  But I have come to the conclusion that the columnists and comics I enjoy cannot counteract the ill filling I now have for Gannett Media.    Before the price increase, I will be cancelling my subscription. 

Now -- what do I read with breakfast? 

The Post Office is killing itself

I will freely admit I do not know what the solution is to the Post Office's financial problems.  But I suspect decreasing service is not it.  The general reaction from industries facing full or partial extinction is to accelerate their own demise. 

If the Post Office delays delivery, customers will find alternatives.  Timely delivery isn't that important for the holiday cards and the few letters I write.  But it is of utmost importance for companies like Netflix and weekly magazine purveyors.  It is also important for people who send their bill payments via snail mail.  The calculation of when to mail a bill payment for timely delivery just became more complicated.  Once people have found an alternative, they are not going to return to the Post Office. 

I don't receive much personal mail.  I get the majority of my bills via e-mail.  And I resent the companies that do not offer me that option.  I order books frequently from Amazon and some of those arrive via postal delivery, but many are delivered by FedEx or UPS.  And now that I have purchased a Kindle, I will be buying fewer physical books.  I am part of the problem.

Newspapers are following the same path.  They decry the loss of readership, but offer less and less to those of us still subscribing.  The newspaper I get now, in a major metropolitan area, is thinner on several days a week than the newspaper I grew up with.  A small time newspaper.

Nor does it help the newspaper's plight that it refers people to the internet for more information.  Once a person gets into the habit of going to the internet for their news, their affinity for print news lessens. 

Formerly successful industries are fated to be destroyed by our rapidly changing technology.  Records are replaced by MP3 except by collectors and purists.  Pay phones have all but disappeared, the need replaced by ever cheaper cell phones.  Land lines themselves are becoming rarer.  Personal checks are being supplanted by debit cards and on-line banking. 

I don't know the solution, if there is one.  I know I would not return to sending and receiving my bill payments through the mail.  Nor would I give up my cell phone to save the pay phone industry.

Technology advances, cultures change, and industries become obsolete.  When was the last time you needed coal delivered to stoke your furnace?

Week Two without a newspaper

As I said in Experiment in printless news, I put my newspaper on vacation hold for two weeks to see if I could live without what is, for me, a tradition and habit combined.

I've already blogged about week one.  How did week two go?

Day Eight - I read a really interesting article in Mental Floss magazine about Anton Chekhov.  I finish my breakfast early and get to work before my usual time.

Day Nine -The netbook I ordered on Sunday arrived yesterday. I eat a bagel while poking around the computer and seeing what's installed on it. 
  
Days Ten to Thirteen -I eat my breakfast while checking e-mail, Facebook and Twitter. I check the headlines on iGoogle  Twice I read an article . I find links to some of my favorite columnists and read them - once.

On Day Thirteen, I suddenly realize on this, my errand day, I don't know what the grocery sales are for this week.  I didn't notice the lack last week, but this week I want to know the price of Pepsi. Are the ads on-line?  I don't bother to look. 

Day Fourteen - Sunday.  I step outside to walk the dogs and am both delighted and annoyed that the Sunday paper has been delivered.  Delighted at being able to read it.  Annoyed that my two week experiment is only 12 days.  It messes with the symmetry.

I realize today that without the newspaper, I have not been checking my lottery numbers.  Maybe I am wealthy beyond belief at this very moment.  I log on-line to check the numbers.  No.  Sigh. But they do offer to text me the numbers in the future.  I sign up.

I find I am not all that anxious to read the paper.  I haven't missed reading the news.  While I don't know what is going on in the world, I am also not as depressed about the cruelty of man against man, and man against animal.  Is ignorance bliss? 

I read the comics and two lifestyle articles I really enjoy.  Then I read the Pet of the Week.  I learn the featured dog was abandoned in a back yard with another dog that attacked it savagely.  I cry.  This is the news I haven't been getting this past two weeks.  News I wish I could expunge from my brain.  

I ended the last post with "Printless doesn't have to mean news less."  In my case, it appears that it does.  With all of the other options available to me, without the newspaper, I didn't avail myself of any of them. 

My original dilemma was whether to get my news from a source other than a printed newspaper. 

My new quandary is - news or no news?

Week one without a newspaper

As I said in Experiment in printless news, I put my newspaper on vacation hold for two weeks to see if I could live without what is, for me, a tradition and habit combined.

So how did it go?

Day One - doesn't really count because my vacation hold didn't.  Hold, that is.  My paper was delivered as always.  While I walked the dogs I remembered how thorough and engrossing the coverage had been of the Tuscon tragedy.  Would I have wanted to miss that?   And in the paper I read an interesting article on the Big Horn Sheep overpasses on the highway by the Hoover Dam.  This article was listed on my iGoogle, but I don't know that I would have been as interested by the headline without the photo. 

Day Two - this time the vacation hold held.  I had no paper intentionally for the first time in at least 20 years.  AHHH!.  Moment of panic.  With my breakfast I read a fascinating article in the Smithsonian on the various wavelength telescopes that are perusing our universe. The article included some of the most beautiful photographs I have ever seen. 

At work, I skimmed my iGoogle headlines, but nothing caught my interest.

Day Three - ate my bagel breakfast while catching up on Twitter on my phone.  I tried to read comic strips on my phone but the print was way, way too small, even with readers on. 

Again, the iGoogle headlines interested me not.

Day Four - in Smithsonian magazine I read an interesting article on Samuel Eliot Morrison, a World War II historian that wrote a fifteen volume History of United States Naval Operations in World War II.   

News?  What news.


Day Five  - for some reason, in my driveway there is a copy of the East Valley Tribune.  I flip through it with breakfast, thinking it will curb my news hunger.  I am not impressed.  And it carries hardly any comic strips.  I abandon it to pore through a Leanin' Tree greeting card catalog.

At work, I overhear a conversation about Charlie Sheen's spectacular, incoherent rant and check it out on-line.  Maybe news by water cooler can keep me current?

Day Six - I am starting to feel uninformed and disconnected.  I miss the columnists I read daily and weekly.  I soothe myself with the new issue of SyFy magazine. 

Day Seven - Sunday.  I am lost without my paper.  The Sunday issue is full of fluff and folderol that I don't read, but it has my Sunday comics, the Brand column (which I can't find on-line), and the pet of the week.  I read part of Mental Floss magazine with breakfast. 

Afterward, I decide to order the net book I have been contemplating.  Perhaps I can use it to read the news with my breakfast.

Printless does not have to mean news less.

Experiment in printless news - Day Zero

So I took the plunge, or rather the mini-plunge.  I put my newspaper on vacation hold starting tomorrow to test whether living without it would throw me into a panic.

I like to read when I eat, but I have other items to read; magazines, short stories, news on my phone.  Will this be enough?  Will I be able to keep up with the news on-line?

Today, the last delivery day, I made a note of all the things I dislike about my newspaper.  Besides the previously blogged lack of content  The disappearing newspaper, I dislike - front page foldovers, advertising stickers pasted over the headline, ungrammatical sentences or speling errors that *any* computer should catch, and the shrinking size of the comics.

Add to that, I have never forgiven them for swapping out the Parade magazine on Sundays for USA Weekend.  Plus, recently some of my newspapers have been scented which aggravates my allergies. And they have a tendency to exclude the weekly columns I like whenever the mood strikes them.  

Lastly, a particular pet peeve is they charge me extra for the Thanksgiving Day issue because it is such a large edition.  It is large because it contains tons of extra advertising inserts - that the advertisers paid for.  That the newspaper now charges me extra to receive. 

Writing this all down makes me wonder why I have continued to subscribe to the paper for so many years.

Let the experiment begin!

Missing newspaper

My newspaper was not in my driveway this morning.  And I was surprised by how much that bothered me.  My Sunday morning routine was disrupted.  My comfortable world tilted. 

It's not like I don't have other sources of news.  In fact, the newspaper is getting to be an anachronism in a digital world.  The news is available - and more current - on-line.  And I can get on-line either by booting up my computer or by browsing on my smart phone.

So if not the news, what was I missing?   Well, I read when I eat.  Always have.  Probably always will.  But without the newspaper to entertain me, I read an interesting article on lynx preservation efforts in Montana in the Smithsonian magazine. 

So I wasn't missing the news or going without something to read.  So what?

I think part of what I missed was the tradition.  And part was familiarity and ease.  I know where I can find the Clay Thompson column, Montini, Roberts, the weather, the lottery numbers.  And since it was Sunday, I knew I would find Brand's column and the pet of the week in the Living section.  The color comics are have always been a Sunday favorite. All of this in one handy package that lays flat on my table for easy reading with my morning bagel.

I've considered a Kindle with a newspaper subscription.  But I don't think reading the paper on a Kindle will feel the same.

Traditionalist?  Or Luddite?