Our local paper only adds value to our family about 3 days a week, one day when the Grocery ad's are published and Saturday and Sunday, Saturday for the gardening and local area section and Sunday for the "Major Retailer" sales ad's and color funnies.
A good friend of mine was separated ( the news paper does not "lay" off people because its not politically correct to link a paper to a business decision) from his head of Sales and Advertising position at the local paper. Seems he has been unable to meet targets for the last two years, targets that were being increasing aggressive because of loss of revenue. Apparently his superiors at the paper could not understand that "retailer websites" and "e-bay" and "Craig's" list could exist and be a replacement to the average person for their need to list, sale and look for items of interest.
The only reason I take the paper 7 days a week is that the artificially raise the subscription rate for subscribers that only want it on the weekends. Seriously it is more expensive for a 2 or 3 day subscription than it is for 7 days.
And the constant pressure by the environmental groups telling kids that paper is bad and kills trees and that will lead to doom and gloom does not help the business model for any profit oriented group. Of course, in our neck of the world, we understand that "Pine" trees are a cash crop, a renewable resource that creates jobs, something that seems to get lost on some.
But back to the point, I fully believe that Newspapers in print are an endangered species, I don't think they will be around in 10 years much less 20.....
