Momnesia

Daily Papers Should Blame Themselves, Not the Economy

Augusta, Ga. - Scott came into the bedroom where I was groaning in general funkitude. I'm sick, and whiny. He had an apprehensive look on his face. Oh, god. What now?

"I just wanted to tell you that we'll be getting the daily again," he said, slowly.

We took the paper for a while, against my better judgement, and there wasn't a month that went by when we didn't have problems. We cancelled it several years ago when we couldn't get the issues to actually show up - or we'd get partial issues, or get them in the afternoon, or any number of ridiculous problems.

He put up his hand when I rose from my sickbed with murder in my eyes.

"They called yesterday and asked if we wanted to take it again. I said no, but they said that we had temporarily suspended it, but that still had a month left that we had pre-paid for. So I told them to send it for a month, and then end it."

... I was incredulous. First of all, I called to cancel, not suspend. Second, when I called to cancel the subscription, why didn't they inform me of my account balance? And third, why are they just now calling - TWO YEARS LATER?!

This is why the most workable model of the future is the free weekly paper - as demonstrated by the model's consistent growth in readership over the last 20 years.

As the news cycle speeds up, people get their wire stories from the web. They get their in-depth local stories from the weeklies. That leaves the daily print publications in no-man's land.

And after this month is up, I hope they don't dare call here again.
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