First, a thought going around in my head- perhaps I've said it before- but I think the government dropped the ball with the stimulus (duh)- I think they should have authorized money for new street signs. People could have been employed to put up the street signs, but more importantly, it would have employed thousands in the local news departments around the state who would have to take new pictures of the street signs to run in stories. After all, what's a local news story without the picture of the street sign?
I recently jettisoned the paper. After the price hike was announced, I started paying attention to the paper- it has five sections- the World/opinion section, the Living Section, the Local Section, the Sports Section and the Classifieds.
I do not read the Living section as I couldn't care less about yoga and fluffy slippers and recipes for pasta (and I don't read the funnies).
The sports section is basically high school sports (which I don't care one iota about), minor league sports (Amerks and Red Wings) which I care less than one iota about, the Bills (whom I cannot stand), and then wire stories about real sports. I can read those stories elsewhere for free.
The Local Section has the obits which I couldn't care less about (the only way I'd care would be if I were in them, and if I were, then I wouldn't care anyway). It has the waste of space stories about local fundraisers (I am not into filler stories). Then it has local stories such as crime, the government etc which I do care about, but can read those on YNN, WHAM, etc for free.
I did an analysis of the first section of the paper over a week- roughly 80% of the stories that I started to read, I had seen on the web already. I'm sure if I searched, I could find the other 20%.
Which leaves the classifieds- the lifeblood of my business- I need to know about auctions, sales, etc. Except there are websites that all the auctioneers and estate sale services use. Craigslist and the like have the garage sale listings. There's a website for library sales. About the only thing I may miss are the occasional Church Sale (though a lot of them advertise on Craigslist).
In other words, I was subscribing to the paper out of habit- I spent roughly an hour a week reading the paper (and that may be on the high side- it's more like five minutes a day).
My wallet thanks them for their foolish decision.
-Zjabs (Rochester's Official Columnist)
© 2012 Zjabs - 5/15/12
