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View Full Version : Do you still get a local paper?



Matt Meiser
01-28-2012, 10:31 AM
Just curious as I've been reading a lot about this lately between a debate raging on a local newspaper's forum about the local paper's decline and from Facebook posts from a childhood friend who's a night editor for a big city paper.

I actually created a poll I can't answer in a straight forward manner myself. There's a local 2x weekly, delivered by mail paper that covers the west part of our county where I live that we have gotten for 10 years now and I don't anticipate dropping that. The regular newspaper for our area we dropped a few years back because of rapidly declining quality. Most of the content was rehashed stuff from the AP I read anywhere from 8-72 hours ago online and there was way too little local reporting. We also get the Toledo Blade which does almost as good a job covering our local news but I'd like to drop that or at least cut back to Sunday only--most daily editions go straight to recycling and the only reason I know of that we get it is that my wife wants the Sunday coupons and ads. I would actually read it except that anything important I've read online by the time the physical paper gets in the house.

Paul McGaha
01-28-2012, 10:54 AM
We've gotten our local paper (the Washington Post) delivered to us for a long time.

It's affordable. I think we'll always get it.

PHM

Rich Aldrich
01-28-2012, 10:57 AM
I do but it is only a weekly paper. I live out in the country so I would get yesterdays paper today if I got a daily, so it would not work for me anyway. It could be delivered to my work address the same day. I used to work for the papermill in Manistique until it went bankrupt due to sales and high wastepaper prices (raw material). There have been a lot of mills shutdown since the internet started. The decrease in newsprint is on the order of 5% per year for the last 8 years. The first quarter of last year, 10 large metro area newspapers ceased printing. They all are on line.

The papermill in Manistique is running again and will go up for auction in the next month or so. NewPage is in bankruptcy. NewPage is a large manufacturer of coated paper for magazines and catalogs. Obviously the internet has had a big affect in these areas as well.

Gordon Eyre
01-28-2012, 11:05 AM
I have always taken a local paper.

Matt Marsh
01-28-2012, 12:43 PM
We use to, but our local daily has become so blatantly biased that we dropped it. I check the obits on a regular basis online, but thats about it.

Joe Pelonio
01-28-2012, 12:51 PM
I read the news from many sources and areas online from my Android on the way to work (Bus) but still get the local daily paper. I read it in the evening despite the overlap/repetition. On the weekends I enjoy it with my morning coffee and don't have to worry about spilling on my laptop keyboard. I think it's just more of a habit than anything else.

Bruce Page
01-28-2012, 12:54 PM
I still get the local newspaper every day. I also subscribe to a couple of magazines on my iPad and have been thinking about switching the paper subscription over to their wireless version.

John Fabre
01-28-2012, 1:03 PM
Still getting the local paper daily while watching CNN and reading the news online.

Phil Thien
01-28-2012, 1:15 PM
My father was a newspaper man. I grew up reading the paper, and still take one today.

That said, I'm probably going to drop it. Tired of opinions disguised as news. Tired of delivery issues. And the price keeps going up.

Brian Elfert
01-28-2012, 1:56 PM
I do but it is only a weekly paper. I live out in the country so I would get yesterdays paper today if I got a daily, so it would not work for me anyway. It could be delivered to my work address the same day. I used to work for the papermill in Manistique until it went bankrupt due to sales and high wastepaper prices (raw material). There have been a lot of mills shutdown since the internet started. The decrease in newsprint is on the order of 5% per year for the last 8 years. The first quarter of last year, 10 large metro area newspapers ceased printing. They all are on line.


Which ten major metro papers went online last year? I work at a major metro newspaper and I'm not aware of more than a handful of major metro papers that went online only. A few still print some days of the week.

I subscribed to the newspaper long before I started working there. Unfortunately, I don't think working at a newspaper is a long term career option. Luckily, my skills are transferable to just about any industry.

Dave Lehnert
01-28-2012, 2:11 PM
I pick up the local paper on the news stand from time to time if a big event happens. With local TV news on all the time here paper is kinda old news.
I do like USA today. Anyone get USA Today on the I-pad or kindle?

Gary Hodgin
01-28-2012, 2:17 PM
We get the local paper (small town) everyday and get The Tennessean (more national and state) on weekends. We get a lot of coupons from each and they basically pay for the papers.

Rich Greinert
01-28-2012, 2:18 PM
Yes, but only 3 days a week now. Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. Tried to cut back to just Sunday delivery however that is not an option with the local paper. It's 3 day delivery or 7 day delivery or nothing. I wonder why newspapers are having a difficult time?

ray hampton
01-28-2012, 3:56 PM
at one time ,I had a choice of three different papers but no more , paper is not hard copy any more, it is still call a newspaper but the paper is the internet

Michael Weber
01-28-2012, 4:13 PM
Still get our local daily. It's been kind of sad watching it get smaller and smaller over the last few years. The Monday and Tuesday editions are down to only 2 sections. Latest thing I've noticed is rather than print news (local or not) they pad out the paper with stories of those with almost any kind of claim to fame who recently died. I just assume that kind of story is cheaper than printing hard news or paying a local reporter. Still, I've been reading it for my entire life and will continue as long as it's printed.

Bruce Darrow
01-28-2012, 8:45 PM
For most of my life, the daily paper was an indispensable part of my day. My local daily - one of the oldest in the USA, FWIW - was, for many years, and for a small town paper, pretty good. Then the son of the publisher took over from Dad, and the editorial slant changed for the worse. I put up with that for some time, but then the internet began making inroads into the news content, and the reading became even less interesting. Delivery reliability became spotty - as often as not, the paper would not be in my box when I left for work, so my lunch time routine was bereft. The final blow was a screwup on my subscription - I'd had enough. Let it lapse and haven't really been tempted to reup.

Being a dial-up orphan without TV and not a particular fan of either NPR or Fox radio, I am now blissfully IGGERANT!

Doug Mason
01-28-2012, 9:14 PM
I haven't subscribed to a local paper in over ten years.

A favorite part of my day used to be recieving the San Francisco Chronicle (my local rag) in the morning and spending up to an hour reading it; but around the late 1990's, the content changed from in-depth reporting of both local and national news to a format identicle to "USA Today" -- a format in which it had short articles with no substance and most of the content was off the AP wire (similar to the news format on the internet).

So I have completely abandoned all my local papers for the Economist, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times (for the European view).

Rod Sheridan
01-28-2012, 9:24 PM
I subscribe to the weekend edition of The Toronto Star and at work The Globe and Mail.

I do enjoy reading the paper much more than on line content................Rod.

Ted Calver
01-28-2012, 10:50 PM
I read two local papers, the Virginia Gazette and the Daily Press. The Gazette comes twice a week and the DP comes Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We get the DP strictly for the Sunday paper and the coupons. I read the Gazette for it's good coverage of local news. They are both reasonably priced but have been getting thinner and thinner. I suspect they will try to transition to digital or start advertising questionable products.

Jamie Buxton
01-28-2012, 11:05 PM
The newspaper has two costs: news collection, and printing+distribution. Printing the paper, and running around in trucks delivering individual copies, is a wildly inefficient way of spreading news around. Electronic distribution means there's zero printing cost and nearly zero distribution cost. So physical newspapers are turning into luxury items.

Me, I'm happy to pay for the news collection part (and I do -- subscribing to the New York Times online). But paying for the luxury of actual newsprint is beyond me.

Curt Fuller
01-29-2012, 12:02 AM
Reading the local paper is such an ingrained habit with me I would be lost without it. And I have a terrific paper boy who gets my paper on the porch by 4am every morning so I can read it before I got to work. Actually, I don't know for sure if it's delivered by a boy or girl anymore. I pay and tip online and never see the delivery, but the footprints in the snow are small.

Rich Engelhardt
01-29-2012, 4:52 AM
Weekends only.

Floyd Cox
01-29-2012, 4:55 AM
Yes, gotta keep up with the small town gossip.

Walter Plummer
01-29-2012, 7:55 AM
We just pick up the Sunday edition at the grocery store for the ads and TV Guide. The Washington Post actually prints a less complete TV guide in the store editions to "encourage" people to subscribe.

Jim Matthews
01-29-2012, 9:14 AM
What passes for a newspaper in Southern Coastal Massachusetts is embarrassing.
I get the Boston Globe, on occasion. If it appears on Kindle, I will subscribe.

We're charged an additional 50 cent "distance" surcharge for the 40 mile delivery.
Not enough around here can be bothered to read, so their circulation is dwindling.

Myk Rian
01-29-2012, 10:13 AM
We both read the paper front-to-back, every day.
I will not read the paper on-line.

Shawn Pixley
01-29-2012, 11:09 AM
When I lived in Seattle, I read the paper every day on my commute. One of the best parts of my day. I took the local paper when I moved to California. I had to drive to work rather than using mass transit, so the paper didn't really serve me as well. This was compounded by the lesser quality of the local paper here. As technology improved, I became increasingly concerned with the environment burden of paper products (use once, then recycle). Eight or so years ago, I went to getting my paper "fix" online. i still miss a good paper sometimes.

Larry Browning
01-29-2012, 11:28 AM
The day I noticed the rather large pile of newspapers still with the rubber band around them I called and canceled my subscription. That was about 5 years ago. Haven't missed it for about 6 years! I get most of my news from TV and internet. I really don't miss the big pile of news paper at all.

Gordon Eyre
01-29-2012, 4:52 PM
How would I know if I died if I didn't take the local paper?

ray hampton
01-29-2012, 5:12 PM
How would I know if I died if I didn't take the local paper?

death noticed usual take two or three days before the paper print them

Curt Harms
01-30-2012, 8:09 AM
rabbit cage would miss the paper :p. I doubt SWMBO could live without the morning paper; it's part of the ritual. The paper has an abbreviated version free online. I wonder if they've considered making a more complete online version available by subscription.

Bill Edwards(2)
01-30-2012, 9:00 AM
My wife gets the local paper because she grew up here.

But it's printed in a town over 30 miles away and is delivered by the USPS.

It used to be printed here and we had a paper girl (??)

Go figure.:confused:

Justin Green
01-30-2012, 7:09 PM
Our paper has some very strong biased views and rarely publishes a countering opinion, so I choose not to give them my money. I can get the headlines they publish the day before from somewhere else.

Paul McGaha
01-30-2012, 8:21 PM
Most days I eat lunch by myself. Really like reading the paper at lunch. Mostly the sports. The Washington Post has some really good sports writers. Like Mike Wilbon and Sally Jenkins. Good reading.

Newspapers probably will go the way of the horse and buggy sometime fairly soon. Magazines too. American Woodworker is the only subscription I get. It's not as good as it used to be.

PHM

Mike Hollingsworth
01-30-2012, 8:28 PM
iPad was the nail in the coffin.
I got the Los Angeles Times for forty years.

Bryan Morgan
01-30-2012, 11:41 PM
Everyone in this city gets the local city paper for free whether you asked for it or not. I like it, the information is only about this city and a little about neighboring cities. I don't subscribe to any mainstream media type papers though (LA Times, etc) as I can't tolerate that tripe and don't believe anything thats in there. Every time I've been in the paper for something they took what I said out of context and basically re-arranged what I said to push whatever agenda they had at the time. When family has been in the paper for something almost everything written was just plain wrong and untruthful. Nope, not paying for this nonsense.

Jeff Hamilton Jr.
01-31-2012, 12:25 AM
Dropped local, but for weekends; Can't live w/o my morning hard copy of the WSJ though ... Great writers.

Charles Wiggins
02-02-2012, 11:12 AM
I've worked in libraries most of my adult life. Because of that I've never subscribed to any local paper and I've subscribed to very few magazines. In fact, several years back I used to get the old Shop Notes from the library after they were through with them.

Greg Portland
02-02-2012, 2:43 PM
Just curious as I've been reading a lot about this lately between a debate raging on a local newspaper's forum about the local paper's decline and from Facebook posts from a childhood friend who's a night editor for a big city paper.

I actually created a poll I can't answer in a straight forward manner myself. There's a local 2x weekly, delivered by mail paper that covers the west part of our county where I live that we have gotten for 10 years now and I don't anticipate dropping that. The regular newspaper for our area we dropped a few years back because of rapidly declining quality. Most of the content was rehashed stuff from the AP I read anywhere from 8-72 hours ago online and there was way too little local reporting. We also get the Toledo Blade which does almost as good a job covering our local news but I'd like to drop that or at least cut back to Sunday only--most daily editions go straight to recycling and the only reason I know of that we get it is that my wife wants the Sunday coupons and ads. I would actually read it except that anything important I've read online by the time the physical paper gets in the house.

We ordered the local paper specifically for the coupons but I've since enjoyed reading the occasional article (typically local-interest stories).

Ed Aumiller
02-02-2012, 5:40 PM
Still get local paper for local news only... and funny strips....

Jim Becker
02-02-2012, 9:02 PM
If you mean a subscription paper, never have; never will. We do pick up one local weekly as it's freely available at many places and very nicely done. Our neighbor's daughter is the art director, as a matter of fact. It's one of the better locals I've ever read. It's not hard core reading and is just enough to provide cage liners for our birds when we are done skimming through it. :D

Jerry Thompson
02-03-2012, 8:34 PM
I stopped one year ago. It turned into a "No-News Paper."