A couple of years ago, I reported here that I'd canceled my daily subscription to the New York Times, but was still taking the Sunday paper. Today, I went all the way: I discontinued Sunday delivery. For the first time in, well...pretty much my entire life, there won't be a newspaper on my stoop any day of the week.
(Actually, that was part of the problem. My home is an an urban area and doesn't even have a stoop--and my Sunday Times got swiped pretty much half the time.)
As I said in my earlier post, I love newspapers--and as a guy who works for a company that puts out a magazine, I'm a print fan whose best interests are served if the world remains full of dead-tree publications for years to come. (Actually, I still subscribe to scads of magazines and have no plans whatsoever to cut back).
But facts were facts: By the time I wended my way downstairs to get the paper on Sundays, I'd usually done a ton of news reading online, including at the Times' own site. By paying for the paper, I was paying for stuff I'd already gotten for free, and killing trees in the process.
I do feel kinda guilty about this. I'm certainly keenly aware that it takes lots of money to do great journalism, and that subscribing to the print edition does more to pay for the Times' excellence than reading it online does. So maybe I'll cough up the $50 a year to become a Times Select member; whether or not I take advantage of any of the benefits that confers upon me, at least it'll make me feel better.
And hey, if the Times ever went the PBS route and asked for pledges from its Web readers, I'd pony up every year. Seriously.
Meanwhile, here's a little poll:
And here's a side note. The New York Times' customer-service line has a feature I've never encountered before: If there's a wait to talk to a rep, you can tap in your phone number and get an automated callback when someone's ready to help you. Wouldn't the world be a better place if every company did that for its customers?
