Would you subscribe?

My mom has a Sunday only subscription to my paper and one with my town's weekly pub.

We used to get the Sunday Courier-Journal, but am pretty sure that was just a trial subscription or whatnot.

 

I get it free, daily. I use it to start the fires in the fireplace.

 

The newspaper used to be a great deal. Plenty of information, puzzles, cartoons, coupons, and a sense that you were aware of what was going on in your community. I don't get that sense from print any more. And it isn't just that the newshole has been slashed, pages and sections gutted, staffs cut while the price of the paper remains the same, it's that as a media consumer I've become accustomed to making my own choices of what I want to read and learn about. National and International news (CNN, NYT, USA Today, Google, Yahoo) Sports (ESPN, SI, Yahoo), Entertainment (EW), Politics (Politico, RCP, HuffPost) Local (local TV and paper).
I really don't see how a local print edition can expect to compete with that and think people will pay money for a paper they can breeze through in less than 5 minutes.

 

I hope the AJC's 30 million dollar investment in new (actually refurbished used) printers pays off. Honestly though, why would nice-looking ink really draw that many people in? So what if the daily comics are in color.

 

There's your answer. And when you cancel and they ask you why and you tell them, see if they offer to keep charging you $26 for six months. Bet they might.

 

I am out of the business, and I subscribe to two papers. One is the big metro and the other is the county weekly paper.

At my job, we start the day by reading the metro I bring in to work and the regional daily another person brings.

So I read three printed papers a week.

We all hit the websites as well.

 

It'll be worth a shot for sure.

 

I did that with SI not too long ago. They were pretty quick to say, "Nevermind" on the price jump.

 

I subscribed for a little over a year after leaving my reporting gig. I let my subscription to the area metro paper lapse six months ago when it essentially stopped covering the city that I live in. I refuse to subscribe to the Paxton-owned, hometown daily because of the shit they put people I care about through.

It's been the first six months of my 30+ years on this earth that I have not lived in a house with a daily paper delivered. I can't say that I miss it much.

I do pick up the student paper on campus almost everyday and occasionally grab one of the free NYT's when I can get to 'em before they're all gone.

 

because i am around the paper all the time, i never read it when i get home. people are telling me all the time, "you mean you didn't read your own paper? it was right there on page one." it baffles them, but again, i see enough of it as it is.
now if i didn't work here, i would probably subscribe.

 

If something is worth the weekly/monthly price for me to subscribe, unless I have no money, I will pay for it.

I see less and less reasons to do so with newspapers. Especially when I can get, for free, in one format what they are asking me to pay them for in another format.

 

Six months after leaving the biz and moving here, the wife got me a subscription for Christmas. We've kept it up even though I barely have time to read it. (I usually take it to lunch with me and read then.) Even with the noticeable decline in quality, we'll probably keep it up as long as it stays a daily.