Great read. We also canceled the Sunday Times this year - though I remain a digital subscriber. I miss seeing the magazine and Week in Review on my coffee table until recycling day, beckoning me to the stories I didn't get through on Sunday morning.
My local paper, the Baton Rouge Advocate, still appears in my driveway every morning and still gets read with the first cup of coffee. We are lucky to still have a 7-day print edition, even though it gets smaller and smaller and the price keeps increasing.
This was a wonderful read Ted! I still sub the Saturday and Sunday Times and really don’t touch it anymore. It just sits there with printouts of stories I already read. Yet I can’t quite hit cancel yet for so many of the reasons you articulated.
Splendid recollection and look forward, too. I'm reluctant to let my subs to the Inquirer and Wall Street Journal pass, yet fully cognizant that day is looming closer and closer.
Earlier this week, I had a conversation with the new COO of our local paper. It's now part of a newspaper group, with the hope that an economy of scale can help keep all four small newspapers in far-flung areas of the Albuquerque region afloat. We spoke of the importance of reflecting the local flavor and audience in each of the four different communities. Largely, though, we spoke about getting advertisers and the growing resistance to spending precious marketing dollars on print ads.
Newspapers have always been our resource for local import, events, and slice of life stories. Our small town is planning for its upcoming 25th Anniversary celebration in 2024. We hoped to pull together information from the several local newspapers that have existed here during that time. Sadly, none have accessible archives and the library didn't archive the papers due to space limitations. When each of those publications slipped away, so went the town's history as told by a third party. Sadly, that history happened in this period of transition. Very few of our stories are available online.
Change is inevitable, and it's usually messy and disordered. Such has been the case with newspapers. The big ones have yet to figure out the new model, and the small ones keep slipping away. I am optimistically putting out a challenge to Gen Z, problem-solvers that they are, to find a meaningful way to keep journalism authentic (lose the opinion that has become commonplace as 'news') and focus on telling the local stories, not just the big headlines. Local is relatable, local is touchable, and local is ultimately what impacts your day-to-day life. It's also the common connection to our relative place in the world.
We're brothers in ink-stained wretchedness, newsman. Our Sunday NYT still lands out front each week, a treasured touchstone of continuity that began in adolescence during the early 1960s when I began walking to a corner store in Upper Manhattan with coins in my pocket to fetch that paper during the late 1950s.
Great read. We also canceled the Sunday Times this year - though I remain a digital subscriber. I miss seeing the magazine and Week in Review on my coffee table until recycling day, beckoning me to the stories I didn't get through on Sunday morning.
My local paper, the Baton Rouge Advocate, still appears in my driveway every morning and still gets read with the first cup of coffee. We are lucky to still have a 7-day print edition, even though it gets smaller and smaller and the price keeps increasing.
Love the way you captured this bittersweet moment.
This was a wonderful read Ted! I still sub the Saturday and Sunday Times and really don’t touch it anymore. It just sits there with printouts of stories I already read. Yet I can’t quite hit cancel yet for so many of the reasons you articulated.
Splendid recollection and look forward, too. I'm reluctant to let my subs to the Inquirer and Wall Street Journal pass, yet fully cognizant that day is looming closer and closer.
I feel your pain and love for newspapers.
Earlier this week, I had a conversation with the new COO of our local paper. It's now part of a newspaper group, with the hope that an economy of scale can help keep all four small newspapers in far-flung areas of the Albuquerque region afloat. We spoke of the importance of reflecting the local flavor and audience in each of the four different communities. Largely, though, we spoke about getting advertisers and the growing resistance to spending precious marketing dollars on print ads.
Newspapers have always been our resource for local import, events, and slice of life stories. Our small town is planning for its upcoming 25th Anniversary celebration in 2024. We hoped to pull together information from the several local newspapers that have existed here during that time. Sadly, none have accessible archives and the library didn't archive the papers due to space limitations. When each of those publications slipped away, so went the town's history as told by a third party. Sadly, that history happened in this period of transition. Very few of our stories are available online.
Change is inevitable, and it's usually messy and disordered. Such has been the case with newspapers. The big ones have yet to figure out the new model, and the small ones keep slipping away. I am optimistically putting out a challenge to Gen Z, problem-solvers that they are, to find a meaningful way to keep journalism authentic (lose the opinion that has become commonplace as 'news') and focus on telling the local stories, not just the big headlines. Local is relatable, local is touchable, and local is ultimately what impacts your day-to-day life. It's also the common connection to our relative place in the world.
We're brothers in ink-stained wretchedness, newsman. Our Sunday NYT still lands out front each week, a treasured touchstone of continuity that began in adolescence during the early 1960s when I began walking to a corner store in Upper Manhattan with coins in my pocket to fetch that paper during the late 1950s.