browser life

On Saturday, I received a curious letter in the mail from the publisher of my local newspaper. It trumpeted an "improved" product coming February 1st, the improvement in question being a digital version of the newspaper that you could access on your tablet, smart phone or computer e-mail. For a mere 20 percent increase in the subscription rate, you got this plus full access to their website, which used to be free.

While this sounds lovely, the one thing their letter DIDN'T mention is that EVERYONE'S subscription rate was climbing 20 percent, whether or not you wanted a digital version. I have no cell phone, no portable electronic devices whatsoever, and I gave up on their poorly designed website some time ago. I called their customer service, and there was no option to continue to just get the regular newspaper for a lesser rate than the "deluxe" version.

Seems to me they honestly don't care whether or not you read the printed version of their publication. They are so busy pushing the digital product that they are driving away their traditional readers. People like me.

So I closed my account. I get my last newspaper February 1st. While I will miss one local, one national and three syndicated columnists whose articles run in this paper, I won't miss the rest of it very much. The content had become so poor that it was pretty much a journalistic joke, albeit not a funny one.

But having worked a decade in the newspaper industry, I felt compelled to tell them WHY my account was closed, so I wrote a letter to the editor. I'm pretty sure it won't get printed, but the act of writing it made me feel better. The following is what I sent:


Dear Editor:

Congratulations on placing a nail in the print media coffin. By springing a rather large subscription rate increase upon all your readers, you will discourage many of them from continuing to receive your product. Those who are disabled and/or have fixed incomes may not have portable devices, or even computers, on which to view your digital version. So why are you making them pay for something they will not use?

The quality and quantity of your newspaper has declined precipitously in the five years I have lived in this city. I see duplicate stories in the same edition, articles that end mid-sentence, headlines that don’t match the content of the story, spacing and format issues, poor grammar, and sentences where it is obvious words were left out. Can no one be bothered to even run a spell check? The end result is a publication that is unprofessional and an embarrassment. We are to pay more for that?

I have canceled my subscription. I have asked around, and I am not the only one who will be doing so. I am not fond of the local TV news, but at least they are not asking me to pay more for less.