Newspapers: Dying or committing suicide?
My newspaper subscription is up for annual renewal. Immediate disclaimer: Due to the nature of my job, I ought to renew. And I can write off the subscription to taxes.
Still, I'm torn.
Last summer, I paid $158 for a year's subscription - shortly before the first of several rounds of layoffs at the paper. Renewing now will be more than $190.
In the past year, the newspaper has laid off a substantial number of its reporting staff - many of them my friends and/or favorite writers. It has cut its pages by (reader guess) about half. It still does fine investigative work, but the daily content that used to take me an hour to read - and enjoy - now occupies about half an hour. On Sunday. Weekdays, maybe 10 or 15 minutes. And I don't want the effing Cary News, so please don't tell me that makes up for any of it.
So basically, I'm being asked to pay about a third more for about half the content - less, if you consider that the dwindling pages are often absorbed by full-page ads.
I believe in newspapers. I worked in news for almost 25 years. My current job relies on the media. I have many friends who still work in news (papers, broadcasting, wires). I want to support this particular rag, which I actually love or have loved, which I believe bottomed out not due to its own failings but to the appalling mismanagement of its corporate parent.
But, as a consumer, I am pissed off. What other business that I regularly patronize has dared to jack its prices so high while gutting its product? Would I pay the exterminator more for coming less frequently? My cable provider if it took away half my channels?
Fact is, I can get most of the content I want by reading the paper online - oh, the shortsightedness of the '90s. And I can subscribe online to comics and syndicated features I like (and I won't have to avert my gaze from Dennis the Menace or Mallard Fillmore any more). If I see something online I want in hard copy, I can go buy that issue.
But it's like slamming the door on a friend in trouble. And I have tried, in real life and in metaphor, never to do that.
So to those of you in the industry or recently "released" from it, I put the question: Is it time to cut it loose? Give me a legitimate reason to feel good about signing on for another year.
[Crossposted from Facebook. Feel free to share.]
Still, I'm torn.
Last summer, I paid $158 for a year's subscription - shortly before the first of several rounds of layoffs at the paper. Renewing now will be more than $190.
In the past year, the newspaper has laid off a substantial number of its reporting staff - many of them my friends and/or favorite writers. It has cut its pages by (reader guess) about half. It still does fine investigative work, but the daily content that used to take me an hour to read - and enjoy - now occupies about half an hour. On Sunday. Weekdays, maybe 10 or 15 minutes. And I don't want the effing Cary News, so please don't tell me that makes up for any of it.
So basically, I'm being asked to pay about a third more for about half the content - less, if you consider that the dwindling pages are often absorbed by full-page ads.
I believe in newspapers. I worked in news for almost 25 years. My current job relies on the media. I have many friends who still work in news (papers, broadcasting, wires). I want to support this particular rag, which I actually love or have loved, which I believe bottomed out not due to its own failings but to the appalling mismanagement of its corporate parent.
But, as a consumer, I am pissed off. What other business that I regularly patronize has dared to jack its prices so high while gutting its product? Would I pay the exterminator more for coming less frequently? My cable provider if it took away half my channels?
Fact is, I can get most of the content I want by reading the paper online - oh, the shortsightedness of the '90s. And I can subscribe online to comics and syndicated features I like (and I won't have to avert my gaze from Dennis the Menace or Mallard Fillmore any more). If I see something online I want in hard copy, I can go buy that issue.
But it's like slamming the door on a friend in trouble. And I have tried, in real life and in metaphor, never to do that.
So to those of you in the industry or recently "released" from it, I put the question: Is it time to cut it loose? Give me a legitimate reason to feel good about signing on for another year.
[Crossposted from Facebook. Feel free to share.]