A Life Reset

Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Gone. Denver Post. Gone. Detroit newspapers publish just half a week for home subscribers. Chicago Sun-Times in bankruptcy protection as like its cross town competitor the Chicago Tribune. Death watches abound on what other newspapers will fold next. The era when large cities had at least two or more daily papers is coming to an end. As a business enterprise, newspapers are thought to be on the way out much like the buggy whip factories of yore.

These are hard times for papers now with their fixed costs but declining revenue from local and national advertisers. For many, it is a question on holding on until the economy turns around and businesses start advertising again locally. But are they are just holding on until the next economic downturn which may finish off the newspaper business for good?

A Local Paper in Decline

Here in Winston-Salem, the local paper, the Winston-Salem Journal, is still cutting back in several ways in order to survive. Every month now for the past six months or so, a few more people either in the production area or in the editorial/reporting area are let go. One notable person let go was an entertainment columnist whose wife was the person behind the Straight Answer Ma’am section of the paper. Sections are being compressed, bit by bit. For example, home subscribers will not receive the television section found in the Saturday edition of the paper unless they ask for it but as I never used it it is not loss to me. At some point, though, the Journal is going to run out of the easy fixes to trim costs and then it may come down to them looking hard at things like reduce the days it prints or drop popular sections from the paper. It is the death by a thousand cuts.

As it is now, there is not much for me to retain my subscription to the local paper at least on a daily basis. Very little of the news in this paper can not be found elsewhere on the Internet, starting first with the paper’s own web site. What makes the paper relevant is local news and sports but it seems what the paper is doing the most damage to its survivability by cutting back on their reporting staff who cover local news and events. In fact, if it was not for the Sunday flyers and coupons, I would be hard pressed to find much value in the paper.

What makes reading a paper so pleasurable?

Still, I am one of those people who love the act of reading the newspaper. There is something comforting in the morning of waking up, fixing some tea and start reading the news on my living room chair. Reading pages of printed type is much easier on the eyes than reading on the computer screen. The fact too that in the act of reading, you may come across articles that may have been missed in our browsing of specific articles that appeal to us when viewing the pages on the Internet. But of course, what I read has to be interesting too.

There is also a sense tat by the mere act of carrying a paper around makes one look smarter than perhaps he truly is but as you know appearances can mean everything. Of course, the Sunday editions with their heft are at least good for 10 points of temporary IQ boost.

Starting a subscription to the New York Times

With a local paper seemingly destined for self inflicted death, what would my be newspaper of choice?

Well, it did not take too much thought especially one prodded by an attractive promotional price but I started a trial subscription to the weekender edition of the New York Times. This edition takes in the Friday, Saturday and Sunday editions of the national editions of the New York Times.

Now, I have always appreciated reading the New York Times but only occasionally did I ever buy a copy which is usually when I was at a coffee shop whiling the time away. I think that in the great newspaper shakeup yet to come, local papers will still exists in a combination of a website and a print edition that comes maybe three or four times a week with a focus on local news and events. The era when big city papers took on national and international news coverage will go away as the papers will not be able to afford to maintain bureaus across the country and the world. However, a few papers of national promience can and will do so. The Washington Post is one and another will be the New York Times.

Now, the New York Times is encountering as difficult as times as any and has initiated cutbacks in many areas including reporting. But unlike other papers, it still maintains a network of news bureaus and reporters from across the world unsurpassed by any others. The level of writing reading the paper far surpasses what passes for writing locally but then Winston-Salem is not New York City which is like a country unto itself.

So what the Weekender edition of the New York Times give me?

Getting the Friday edition of the New York Times compared to the local edition is an eye opening experience. It is twice the heft of the Journal. In terms on content, there are articles from national, international and if you are interested, local news. There is a decent business section but it is an area that in the New York market, the Times has conceded to the Wall Street Journal. Similarly for the Sport sections which the NY Post and the New York Daily News cover extensively for the New York area. So the Times is more selective on those sort of articles, focusing on articles that have a more general, national appeal.

The best part of the Friday edition, though, is the Weekend arts section. I think a third of the edition is dedicated to reviews of films, music and television that have appeal for national audiences. There is extensive coverage of the local theatre and fine arts scene in New York. This is actually a good time to start a subscription because on Broadway, it is the Spring season with new plays starting up production. Reading the reviews of plays like The Impressionists and Blithe Spirit makes me yearn for a local arts scene that is even a fraction of the richness of what is available in New York City. It is a pity that many of the plays now playing on Broadway are just for limited engagements of 10-12 weeks making them more of a local experience rather than a destination experience for tourists who visit New York and as part of the experience take in a show while they are there.

The Saturday edition is pretty much a standard edition much like the daily weekday editions. A bit thinner than the Friday edition but still plenty of articles to peruse.

The Sunday Times is what everyone would take if they had just one newspaper copy to read. It is a monster of a paper, perhaps three or four times the thickness of the local Sunday edition. It is a compendium of everything you want in a paper with in depth articles on books, entertainment, business, news, travel and so much more. The newsstand price of the paper is $5 which makes it comparable to news magazines but no news magazine like Newsweek or Time and match the sheer volume of material you can read in the paper. In a recent Sunday edition, I read part of an series on immigration, a detailed look at executive compensation, a number of articles relating to the President’s trip to Europe, editorial columns from Frank Rich, Thomas Friedman and Maureen Dowd and that is just in the news section. There is the Book Review and the New York Times magazine which featured a look at the current president of Pakistan and his efforts to keep his country from tearing itself apart, something that the local paper insert copy of Parade just does not get into much these days.

I timed myself on how long it took me to read the local paper as compared to the New York Times. I think I went through the local paper in about 30 minutes. There were some local news articles of interest along with an AP story I did not read before on the latest developments from the President’s trip to Europe. The most interesting article for me was seeing that James Johnston was leaving Wake Forest to enter the NBA draft after completing his sophomore year. Read the comics section and check two or three flyers and the coupons and that was it.

For the Sunday Times, I was about two and half hours reading it and that was only because I was rushing it a bit since I had a few things to do in the afternoon. Still, it was a relaxing experience just drinking my tea and reading the news. I would like to think that the mere act of reading the Sunday Times raised my IQ level a few points at least temporarily.

So is getting the New York Times worth it?

But as said before before, this is a trial subscription for which I receive a nice break from the normal subscription price. The full price for the weekender edition is about $8.50/week for home delivery. That is not insubstantial but then I have to think about what I have to do to get the Sunday Times. I would have to get into my car, drive to Barnes and Noble, get the paper and then drive back home with it. About 30 minutes of my time if I did just that and perhaps a $1 in gas mileage. More than likely too, it would be in the afternoon when I do this which sort of kills the whole wake up in the morning with the Sunday Times experience.

So in my opinion, for the money, the New York Times weekender edition is well worth it. It gives me the quality writing and the breadth of topics that I look for in a newspaper. I get a satisfaction from reading that paper that I do not receive from the Winston-Salem Journal. Yet, despite my misgivings I will retain my subscription to the local paper. There is still a need for local news coverage and many writers and reporters that are on the New York Times staff started off in small town newspapers. If the Journal goes, there is very little to take its place. I doubt the News-Record in Greensboro will open a Winston-Salem bureau and dedicate special section just for our city. Local weeklies can not do it. Television stations only highlight the more sensational news of the day and rarely able to provide the depth required to get a full appreciation of a story.

After these eight weeks are over for the trial subscription, I will post back on whether I decided to continue the subscription or not. Got a feeling I might just do that but who knows what the future brings.