Sorry guys, I just canceled my newspaper subscription

The big local metro here just sent me a bill. It was $150 for the year last year. Now it's $380. (The bill actually said $450, and when I called they said that was a mistake. Oh, I feel better.)

Anyway, I really felt guilty doing it, but it's just insane to raise prices that much for a product that's not even good and expect consumers to just go along. Most of the time I read the stories I cared about online anyway.

No wonder our industry is dying.

I still get the other local paper (the one that's more local to my suburban area).

 

$380 for a year? Good Lord.

I get the Washington Post for $50 a year. That, I can deal with. If the price ever hits triple digits -- much less $380 -- I'm out.

That's terrible.

 

I don't know what the cost of your daily at the rack is, but you could just buy the damn thing every morning and not spend much more than $380 a year.

Christ. Are they trying to drive subscribers away?

 

I get the Courant for $1.25 a week, I think. OF course, "get" would imply I had more than one of the last 7 actually show up at my house.

 

I'd LOVE to know which paper is trying to charge nearly $400 for a year subscription.

 

SF Chronicle.

 

I get the weekend edition of the major metro in my area for $8 a month. Friday-Saturday-Sunday. The weekday editions of the paper are too empty for me to care about.

I figured buying them off the rack would be about the same price, and it's on my driveway, so it's worth it. Plus, I'm a coupon freak and figure that pays for the paper itself.

 

And how much have you paid per year in the past?

 

If the one that lands in my yard every morning was not free I would not subscribe.

Good people work there, some of them, and they are hamstrung by decisions made higher up like at other publications in the country. But it often is boring, old, visually unappealing and due to staff reductions has a lot of wire copy.

If I want all of that I can get it online for free, and if that ever changed I would not pay online either.

$400 a year for a newspaper subscription? Maybe for the New York Times, but nothing else.

 

I do pretty much the same thing.

It ticks me off that they put the Weekender section in on Thursday, though.

 

I'm on the Thursday-Sunday plan. I rarely ever open the Friday or Saturday issues.