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2019-Whenever Misc. Grab Bag Thread

More newspapers are biting the dust. The Newark Star-Ledger, Times of Trenton and South Jersey Times will all drop their print editions on February 2. The weekly Hunterdon County Democrat will end on January 30. They’ll all continue with online versions. The Star-Ledger is the biggest in the state by circulation and the other 2 dailies are in the top 10.
 
Yeah, there are thousands of daily papers hanging on by their fingernails. Nobody has yet figured out how to actually make money as mid-market internet news outlet and there's just not enough ad money left in print ... which leaves most of them just chasing ghosts. No matter how you feel about the state of journalism in this country, losing all these secondary market papers won't do anybody any favors. We're getting less informed and dumber as a consequence of this industry slowly imploding
 
andyt said:
More newspapers are biting the dust. The Newark Star-Ledger, Times of Trenton and South Jersey Times will all drop their print editions on February 2. The weekly Hunterdon County Democrat will end on January 30. They’ll all continue with online versions. The Star-Ledger is the biggest in the state by circulation and the other 2 dailies are in the top 10.
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jeffbear said:
Yeah, there are thousands of daily papers hanging on by their fingernails. Nobody has yet figured out how to actually make money as mid-market internet news outlet and there's just not enough ad money left in print ... which leaves most of them just chasing ghosts. No matter how you feel about the state of journalism in this country, losing all these secondary market papers won't do anybody any favors. We're getting less informed and dumber as a consequence of this industry slowly imploding
Click to expand...

I was probably one of the last holdouts I know in continuing to pay for a printed paper delivered every day. Received the N&O daily in my driveway from 1991 (when I first stopped bouncing around apartments and settled into the Concentrated Area for Relocated Yankees) through just a few years ago, then switching to Sunday delivery only with full digital for the rest. Never dropped them because I believe in local newspapers, and despite wanting to support them for the principle of the thing, they just keep pricing me out. It was over $100/mo if I remember correctly when I made that switch, and 4Q2023 my quarterly hit for the Sunday-only delivery jumped from $172 to $273, last one was $279 and is going up again I think I saw in an email a couple weeks ago. Don't know how much longer I can hold out.
 
Yeah, I'm paying for full digital and the price is increasingly ridiculous. I pay for three other digital subscriptions and combined they cost less than the NandO ... who have maybe four reporters doing work I'm interested in.
 
My father was a newspaper reader, we had our local paper delivered in the afternoon (remember afternoon newspapers?) and he’d pick up the NY Daily News on his way to work. On Sundays it was the Daily News, NY Times and Bergen Record. When I got married and moved out, I had the Newark Star-Ledger delivered and later the Asbury Park Press. I subscribed to the print edition of the N&O for longer than I should have, at the end it was a collection of wire service stories and things I had already read online. I switched to Sunday delivery/online but as noted, the pricing got ridiculous. So I’m online only. After checking Twitter, it’s still the first place I go in the morning. And it’s still behind, some of the stories on the start page were still there from a few days ago.
 
For many years, the Raleigh Times was the afternoon paper in this market while the News and Observer was the morning paper. Both had robust sports desks, with the Times leaning in to more local/regional stuff while the N&O was focused on college and pro sports. To think that we've gone from that to basically one interesting sports feature writer and maybe 3 or 4 people who do a halfhearted job of covering the college beat for one paper is just sad. Sports fans often blame ESPN for the state of things, but that's not really fair. Let's face it, ESPN sucks as a news source and really always has. What they mostly do is give us more televised games, and more time filler talking head nonsense. But the internet age has seen retail ad revenue going to local papers cut to the absolute bone and pretty much killed classified advertising all the way dead. That was paying the bills for the local media and it's just gone ... in a matter of a couple of decades.
 
I haven’t read a newspaper in over a decade. Not one. You get instant news on your phone including obituaries and want ads. There is literally zero market for newspapers. Unless you own a birdcage or your kindergartner needs to make a paper mache mask some sort
 
I dropped to Saturday/ Sunday delivery from a daily subscription of the N&O, but rates kept going up and delivery was sporadic, so I bailed about 3 years ago.

Jim
 
HNIM said:
Sorry, State fans, but your receivers really suck. This is an awful watch.
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They've got company ... our o-line sucks too. And most of the defensive secondary. It's just not a good football team when they're playing anybody better than ... say ... Stanford.
 
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