Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Throwing it away

Talk about throwing good money after bad! The gummint is thinking about bailing out the newspaper industry.

Newspapers are failing for a very simple reason. They don't serve their readership. Purely and simply.

Our local rag, the Daily Wipe, can't even reliably deliver a newspaper to my mailbox each morning. It's always subject to debate whether the paper will be there at any reasonable time. I consider a reasonable time to be 6:00 a.m. Anything later than that is reprensible. We still take the daily paper. Milady likes to read it with her coffee. She alights at 6:00 a.m. and most mornings the paper hasn't made it yet.

Our paper, of course, isn't owned by anyone local. It's part of a big conglomerate and I'm told that in very few weeks we won't even have a local printing press. They're using a bigger one from down South.

I don't get my news from the newspaper anymore. I can't depend on them. They've failed to serve me.

Damn all bailouts, everywhere. If you want to survive in business, you'd best be looking after your customers.

4 comments:

J said...

I canceled my TT subscription when they shrunk the size of the Sunday funnies. I told them why, too.

Anonymous said...

I will continue my Sunday only sub. to my local paper until it runs out at the end of the month. I had a phone chat with the City Editor this morning and he knows why as well. I gave him two reasons.
1. The paper is so totally biased to the left as to be a DNC propaganda rag.
2. They, too don't seem to be able to get it to me on Sunday morning. I usually have to call them, then I get it on Monday. Maybe.

What a way to run a business.

Gerry N.

be603 said...

In the 90's they cut out all the youngster paper boys around here. It just occurs to me now that it might have accelerated the decline in subscriptions. It's a lot harder to say no to little Johnny the Eagle Scout when he comes collecting than to "the man" in the van.

Termite said...

The TT has been going downhill for a long time. In fact, ever since the local owners sold it to Gannett.

Bah. I buy it at a local store or from the vending machine, anyway.