Sunday morning is not the same. From an early age to about two years ago, the Sunday routine rarely changed — at some point there was chair, beverage, time, and the Sunday paper. The newspaper would be savored from page to page, section to section.
Memo to the newspaper industry: You should be worried if someone like me no longer reads the Sunday paper. I would read the columns, become a fan of the writers, share stories with my beautiful wife and friends, cut out the coupons, read and buy products from the ads and buy another edition if my paper was late and not even worry about calling circulation for credit.
Now, I don’t. It is as simple as that.
The overall move away from a newspaper subscription went slowly. It started with changing to “just” the Sunday edition. Of course the newspaper had other ideas. They informed me that I “qualified” the Wednesday edition too. It was easy to see why, as it was full of ads and inserts. Trouble was, I did not want it on Wednesday. It inevitably would sit there all day, get baked in the Arizona sun, and get run over by our cars. It was worse when I would travel; try this experiment — put a newspaper outside, in the Arizona sun in the summer, for three days. Pick it up. Be sure to have hand wipes available, as the paper disintegrates in your hands.
The Wednesday edition was an irritant, like natty bugs on a humid day. The payoff was the Sunday paper, you know, chair, coffee, time and read. That leads to the question: At what point do you decide that the Sunday paper is no longer necessary? My point was when it became apparent the Sunday paper was no longer what it used to be. The long Sunday articles that used to be savored and revered for their brilliance became old news, as they were already published online days before. (In some cases, I have read articles online more than a week before finally getting published in the “newspaper.”)
In addition, the sports page no longer included scores. The biggest of big games don’t even get in the newspaper anymore. In the print edition, today, you can plan on maybe a picture from the first quarter of the game of the Arizona State football game, with a cut line at the bottom reading: “For the final score of the biggest game in decades, go to azcentral.com.”
Want more? The paper kept getting smaller and smaller. Less news, less sections, less ads/circulars, less everything. Perhaps the breaking point was when the Thanksgiving edition was small. Yes, I know it is not the Sunday paper, but it is the one edition that makes you feel like a kid again as ads/circulars from every interesting store in the city share their Black Friday offerings.
Now it was time to prepare to quit my Sunday paper habit. Therefore, I started searching for web sites for local news. Television stations had a lot of good, free news. Check. I found an app that publishes a PDF of Sunday ads. Check. Now, online to quit. Check.
But wait, before you go, my friends at the Arizona Republic “wrote to me” ..and asked: am I interested in the electronic version of the paper — no print paper, but a PDF of the paper every day, and access to their web site articles through the paywall? No — I write….But wait, if not at this price…well, what about this price? …conclusion: Ok, so I did not go cold turkey and give up the paper completely, I still get the electronic version for an outrageously cheap price per year. As time goes by, I read this e-Edition (PDF) less and less for the same reasons mentioned above.
The newsprint edition of the Sunday paper? I am out, never plan to go back. When I go for a walk through my neighborhood, very, very, very few of my neighbors get the Sunday paper. My 30ish daughter probably does not even know what the Sunday paper is.
For me, I lost something. Lost because it was no longer valued. No more going out to the driveway at 5:30, then 5:35, then every 10 minutes until it is delivered. No more taking the paper (at about 6:05), sitting down outside, grabbing a cup of coffee, taking in the beautiful morning, and reading, enjoying, savoring. Which leads to this question: If someone like me is out, what is the future of the Sunday paper?
