Warning: there may be a rant ahead. 馃檪
Today I’ll be talking about local newspapers. You know, those things invented a few centuries ago that have somehow survived despite being worth very little. Ah, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Let’s start at the beginning…or at least our most recent beginning.
Moved to Colorado
When we moved to Colorado we thought about subscribing to the local paper just to find out what was going on around here. In addition, Sunday newspapers have tons of coupons so the purchase would likely pay for itself, right?
But we decided not to go ahead, got our news elsewhere, and found other outlets for saving money.
An Offer We Couldn’t Refuse
Several months later the paper mailed us an offer: Get four months (I think this was the length) of the Sunday paper for $20 and receive a free $20 gift card to Amazon when you do.
Ok, so I pay $20 and get $20 to Amazon? So…the paper itself is basically free, right?
How could we say no?
So we subscribed.
The Results
I’ll save you the gory details, but here’s what we learned over those six months:
- The news in the paper was old — We could get the local news faster on the web, mostly through apps and on Facebook. We were consistently reading articles in the paper that we’d seen a day or two earlier elsewhere.
- The coupons were “ok” — Nothing terrible but nothing amazing either. But they took a lot of time to sort through (and the paper itself took a good amount of time to read each Sunday).
- I felt like a tree died with every paper we got — Do you know how much recycling there is with one paper? A TON!
So let’s review: Not much value, a time suck, and killing trees.
Needless to say, we didn’t renew. I’m considering this small spending worth cutting.
Am I Wrong?
But maybe I’m missing something, so I wanted to open it up to ESI readers.
Anyone out there subscribe to a local paper and feel it’s worth the price? I’d love to hear your thoughts…
We used to get the paper years ago. Just the Sunday edition and mainly because I was “in the business” and wanted to see what competitive coupons were coming out every week.
We stopped at some point and have never missed it. Newspapers are in a tough spot right now and I’m not sure they’ll be able to get their business model sorted out soon enough, but it will be interesting to see.
On the other hand, I do read the Wall Street Journal and New York Times every day – online!
You are right on the money IMO! I remember my wife reading an article in the paper and then trying to discuss with me and I would laugh and reply I read about that 2 days ago on the web. It happened frequently and finally she got with the times and cancelled it.
I think it depends on the paper. I used to live in Birmingham, AL, and after several staffing cuts, the local paper was just like you summarized. But now I live in Tampa, and I get the Sunday paper. Here, there are in-depth, investigational pieces. Imagine that: the paper has real journalists. Usually the best stories aren’t covered elsewhere.
One sad consequence of the Internet and free content is that media outlets don’t have the budgets to pay for substance. We still see the highlights – the shootings, the terrorist plots, the sky-is-falling ratings busters. What we don’t see enough of anymore are the real stories about our local communities.
Some may be good. Most are not worth it. Mostly ads and artciles are fluff that don’t interest me. I like on line sources as it is quicker eaiser to filter and saves a lot of trees in the process.
Even the free ones they drop off on occasion for you to try that have coupons are not worth it.
Reminds me of how does the US post office stay in business. Bills on line, payments on line, what they do deliver is very little worth to me.
Oh I forgot that we get a weekly newspaper for the 4 surrounding cities that give us community updates. It comes in our mail for FREE. The only way I get news now a days.
As far as killing trees, aren’t those trees grown specifically for pulp and then the area re-planted with new trees after harvesting? If you don’t need the pulp to make newsprint would the trees even exist?
Also, how much local online information comes directly or indirectly from the newspaper’s own website? Would your online sources suffer if the newspaper and it’s website shut down?
We moved here 2 years ago and the small town paper is still locally owned, so we thought about subscribing for some of the same reasons (mostly to find out upcoming events in town), but never did because it is just too expensive – $10-12 a month! Ridiculous.
Now that we have local friends, it’s not necessary.
The elderly need the paper. My husband’s grandparents on both sides, and some of the ones I hang out with in nursing homes, aren’t online in any way. The local papers are their way of keeping informed. Also, we have a local mini-paper that’s delivered by mail for free that is super informative about local events, new places opening up, reviews of restaurants in the area, and in-depth coverage about local projects and school stuff. So it depends on the paper.
Count me among the newspaper fans….articles online are usually the readers digest version and only of the top news. The paper includes quite a bit more opinions investigations sociology etc. Yes sociology demographics…we have a journalist who studies such things and reports on them. Our local papers report on how our local politicians are voting…human interest etc.
If you just read online you won’t get much news. Certainly very little local news. Trees are indeed grown for the pulp mills and it is a nice cash crop for our farmers. No farms – no food.
There is a place for online news and for the paper too…there may be some duplication but not to the extent you think. And in my opinion they carry far more articles that could not be found online……the hard version also helps to support the virtual version and the aforementioned farmers.
I used to get the newspaper. Then the price got to be ridiculous and they made the paper so thin it was hard to read! The light would shine through it and mix the articles in the front with the ones on the back–became impossible to read. So knowing I need to adjust my budget–I chose to stop it. I missed it a first but I began to read online and watch the news and found I really did not need it. As far as coupons–they were for products mainly I did not use. I now get my coupons online at coupon.com or other sites.
The newspaper is still very relevant today as it has been for decades and decades. Without the daily newspaper, paper mache would not be possible. Birdcages would go unlined, we’d need to rely on bubble wrap for packing things, we’d be forced to use paper towels to clean windows, starting fires would be more difficult and I might have to buy gift wrap instead of using the comic pages for wrapping gifts. Clearly, we need newspapers, even in 2016.
I think it depends on the paper, the situation and location. We live about mid-way between a major city and some-what major city. The major city paper is terrible, mostly about shootings, crime, corruption and (of course) the election. Most of it is ads. My husband insists on continuing to subscribe even though we are paying full subscription price but only getting home delivery 3 days a week. The rest of the time we either have to buy it in a store or view it online. That paper I think is a waste of our money since most of the stories can be found online and on local TV stations. On the other hand, we use to have a local paper for the small city we live in. That was discontinued a couple of months ago. The city website and Facebook page are useless. We had road construction signs go up near our home and no idea what was going on. Every year they change when the kids are allowed to go “trick-or-treating”. Again it took me forever to figure out it is actually going to be on Halloween this year.
Our local paper went from 7 days a week to three. I continued taking it but the quality of the news continued to decrease. They mailed me a bill to sign up for another year but they would not allow me to pay the amount on the bill when I contacted both their automated and human “customer service reps” but instead asked for a 50% increase. I told them to cancel the service and it took 5 months and numerous calls to make them stop. They even asked me to pay for the papers they delivered after I cancelled. They have lost me forever even though my first job was a newspaper delivery boy!!!