newspapers

[SteveP]

interesting was the recent sale of the boston globe including all its affiliates ( web sites, etc ) for $70m.
the price of a decent ball player but not superstar... and the sale of the washington post at the same time for $250m
leads me to this question:
how many of you actually pay for and get a physical newspaper to read?
might be good to add how old you are.

i am 64. i pay for a daily paper* and read several others online. the rate for the globe has gone up rather dramatically over the last few years but i feel i should support it because they have done a lot of work exposing stuff...

it looks to me like printed papers are the wagon wheels of the next 25 yr.

* notably as today i have to bring 2 bags of them to the recycler.

[Jonathan]

We went from daily to weekend about 5 years ago and dropped it completely 3 years ago. As the business model of running and selling papers has changed, the Orlando Sentinel has responded by having less real journalism. They are dead to me. I get my news online now. I'd consider paying, but so far haven't felt a need, though I do support NPR. I'm 43.

[Dallas Tex]

For most of my life I subscribed to & read NYT and the Washington Post. And to a lesser extent the Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, DMN, and the LA Times.

The best part of the week was Sunday morning, going through the Sunday editions spread across the bed with a cup of coffee.

imho the concept and existence of the paper-of-record, whose standards & work were beyond reproach, left the building about 15 years ago. On an emotional level, I hate that the current state of the industry is a slow death spiral.

Currently I subscribe to zero papers.

[Zimmermanbicycle]

I turned 50 today and get the LA times daily and read the NY times daily online after 10 years of home delivery.
-Eric

[znfdl]

I read all of my new online from various web sources. I also try to receive as many magazines as possible in electronic format.

Additionally, approximately 90% of the books that I read are in electronic format. Love my kindle.

[Matthew Strongin]

I read a few online or on my phone, but haven't had a physical newspaper delivered since I was in college. It's been all online since then. I will pick up a newspaper at the corner from time to time when I need to dry out a pair of wet shoes, though. I'm 35.

[robin3mj]

I'm in my mid 30s and have never subscribed to a paper. Grew up with the Newark Star Ledger in our house, and the NYTimes in Sundays. I read my allotted 10 free stories in the Times on the web (plus a bunch more via RSS readers etc) and occasionally will pickup the Sunday edition, but last I checked it was something like $6.

If I moved back to the NY area I might get a daily paper again,but mainly only for the NY sports coverage. Though even that has seen its value surpassed by the blogs these days.

[deepsix]

I read the Nyt on my phone everyday. I do subscribe to m-f delivery but I get them delivered to the shop and I've never opened one. The cost of delivery m-f is cheaper than just Sunday and comes with unlimited online access on phone and tablet. It's cheaper to throw away the paper every day than subscribe to their tablet and phone apps. Dumbest pricing structure I've ever seen. I'm 29.

[znfdl]

I read all of my new online from various web sources. I also try to receive as many magazines as possible in electronic format.

Additionally, approximately 90% of the books that I read are in electronic format. Love my kindle.

I left out that I am 52 and grew up reading the Boston Globe on a daily basis. Later I switched to the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal; now almost everything I read is electronic.

[PGSmith]

I take delivery of the NYTimes and WSJournal every day. They show up in my mail box and it's a ritual at the end of the day to read them over dinner. I'm 28.

[j44ke]

I read the Nyt on my phone everyday. I do subscribe to m-f delivery but I get them delivered to the shop and I've never opened one. The cost of delivery m-f is cheaper than just Sunday and comes with unlimited online access on phone and tablet. It's cheaper to throw away the paper every day than subscribe to their tablet and phone apps. Dumbest pricing structure I've ever seen. I'm 29.

This pricing problem is industry-wide, unfortunately. Washington Post online is $14/week I think, while the paper is several dollars less. But it isn't a mistake. Monetization of the paper (i.e. actual paper) is still better than online because of the ad rates. There is still the perception among advertisers that ad rates for online ads should be lower, especially with all the ad-blocking technology that people use. So to make up for that loss of revenue, digital-only subscriptions are more expensive. Going to digital subscriptions will actually be good for ad rates and may eventually reduce the price of digital subscriptions (maybe) because they will allow papers to generate more accurate statistics for readers vs. clickers. Readers are more valuable. Clickers just give you page views. The problem is that audience for digital subscriptions, while largely made up of the most valuable demographic (business/middle-class-to-rich people,) is much smaller than the audience for newspapers. That shrinks the advertisers too.

We live in NYC, so we get the NYTimes every day. I have a free online subscription to the Washington Post because of a friend who worked there, but I am not sure how long that will last now. I am 49.

$250 million for one of the national papers of record is a steal. But only if you are willing and able to hemorrhage money for a while. Bezzos could be the perfect buyer. After all, Amazon is a business built on losing money.

[SteveP]

i also note...i pay for an oline subscription to the nyt.
i remember its $15/mth*...

* which i add to the fines assessed on v-s

[Matthew J]

NYTimes Kindle subscription. I'll read the Chicago Tribune free stuff on line from time to time to keep up on local news. Nothing in that paper since its sale to a local Real Estate magnate and subsequent bankruptcy makes it worth a paying subscription. I also follow a number of online news sources both major and highly local (there is a blogsite with news for the Northwest side of Chicago and from the town my dad lives in for instance) Will be following the Washington Times experiment and may try a subscription if it looks interesting enough.

40s.

[theflashunc]

Print newspapers are beyond a dinosaur at this point. Big reason I got out of the business. I didn't want to be like the guy making buggy whips in 1910.

Never subscribed to a paper (I'm 32), but my dad still clings to one.

The business model is somewhat insane in today's world. If I pitched this idea to investors now, they'd laugh at me.

1) Go into the woods, chop down some trees.
2) Turn those trees into pulp paper.
3) Deliver that paper to a giant printing plant.
4) Print yesterday's news onto that paper, bundle it and load it all into trucks.
5) Drive those trucks around town, dropping off yesterday's news.

The mind boggles.

[Dallas Tex]

4) Print yesterday's news.......

This is THE problem. Twitter gets you news seconds after the event.

If anyone thinks that this moment in time is just a low point in the business cycle of newspapers, I would say they are wrong.

The readers (and the reason to advertise in a paper) gets older every year and is not getting replaced with new younger readers.

The time of important, big newspapers has passed.

[liv2bike]

We went from daily to weekend about 5 years ago and dropped it completely 3 years ago. As the business model of running and selling papers has changed, the Orlando Sentinel has responded by having less real journalism. They are dead to me. I get my news online now. I'd consider paying, but so far haven't felt a need, though I do support NPR. I'm 43.

Agree 100% Jonathan. I don't even consider the Sentinel a newspaper anymore. I bum it off my neighbors though when I need to use it to mask something off when I paint. About the only thing newspaper is good for anymore.

We have never had a newspaper subscription. We are in our mid-30's. Get all our news on-line through various feeds. Options. We will buy one on occasion for my wife who likes to clip coupons every now and again.

[Matthew J]

This is THE problem. Twitter gets you news seconds after the event.

If anyone thinks that this moment in time is just a low point in the business cycle of newspapers, I would say they are wrong.

The readers (and the reason to advertise in a paper) gets older every year and is not getting replaced with new younger readers.

The time of important, big newspapers has passed.

While I certainly agree the print era has passed, sure hope you are wrong about the passing of the news paper altogether.

Instant reports on Twitter and other on line sources are as often wrong or misleading as not. Investigative reporting takes a commitment to retain the best professionals with available resources to find and follow through on leads and alternative angles to come up with the full story. Many of the start up online news sources either cannot or do not want to go beyond flashing a photo or video with a caption.

Over reliance on sound bite news yields some remarkable disconnects between the public and reality. Case in point today's Krugman column on a google poll where the majority thought the current federal deficits continue to increase when they are actually decreasing.

[Jonathan]

There is an old saying that if the railroad companies would have known what business they were really in they'd own the airlines today. That statement is fraught with problems and non perfect links but the idea is sound. The business is not papers and pulp and delivery, its delivery of media content. It's Fox, its Sky, its Disney and a few others. They all owned traditional media and were early in making the changes.

[lukasz]

I'd have a daily subscription if I weren't a grad student living in NYC (bye bye $$$. Also I'm giving up that info as my age). There's a lot to be said for sitting down with a paper. We read the news to get an idea of what's going on. It isn't life or death. My news can age a bit. Kind of annoys me that they changed the paper size of the NYTimes a few years ago. Some places in Europe you still get the big one (IHT). I distinctly remember trying to read one in the middle seat of an airplane a few years ago.

One nice thing about paper is that you can't edit it after the fact. Website news makes for sloppy journalism. Check the headline of a NYTimes story against the original headline contained in the URL (which is the original title of the story when they hit "post"). You get some doozies sometimes.

[lukasz]

There is an old saying that if the railroad companies would have known what business they were really in they'd own the airlines today. That statement is fraught with problems and non perfect links but the idea is sound. The business is not papers and pulp and delivery, its delivery of media content. It's Fox, its Sky, its Disney and a few others. They all owned traditional media and were early in making the changes.

I just wish the railroad in the USA hadn't been privatized/deregulated. Hey kind of like the airlines. Now look at both of those industries. The state is good for some things ;)