The Day The New York Times Stopped Coming

So, Saturday was an average day. A plain ordinary morning. I went to the door, and it wasn't there. The Times was missing.

My first thought: a neighbor had taken it. That used to happen when the guy who walked naked in front of his apartment lived down the hall, but he's long gone. Then I glanced up and down, sure enough - the Times was missing from all the doors in the hall. Gone.

Now, this had been coming for a few days - first it was late, then it was down in the lobby to be grabbed as I left for work. There was some issue with the building and delivery. And as if in slow motion, the Times moved further and further away from my door. Now, it is gone.

So, I didn't want to be a baby. After all, I've got a computer. Well, the truth is my family has a lot of computers. We've got iPhones with the Times app on them. We've got laptops. We've got a desktop or three. So, what's the big deal? Ink on dead trees or zeros and ones. Same thing, right?

So, I tried not to care. I just decided I'd pour myself a cup of coffee and read it online. Okay, sure. No problem.

But I couldn't do it in quite the same way. I clicked, and flipped, and glanced, and read. But my eyes glazed over. I could 'browse' but I couldn't read. Kind of like the way you flip through magazines at the newsstand. Furtive glances on pages that you didn't pay for. But reading? No way could I read in the same way.

The next day, the danger passed. The paper arrived on my doorstep. And, to test my theory, I read yesterday's paper. Wow, there's so much in there that I didn't get from my browsing online. More depth. New stories (or so it seemed). More 'engagement' - a word the Web uses all the time. Now maybe this is just a story of old habits dying hard. Maybe a generation that grows up on the iPhone and the laptop will have the same warm fuzzy feeling toward the paper at the door that I do. Maybe.

Or maybe not.

I've always believed that the Times would be the Times - whatever the medium that delivered it. And in fact, I believed that the new digital Times would be better. More room, more depth, more video, more community, more good things.

But then, I had a day without the Times.

Now, I'm not so sure.

 

Originally Posted on "MediaBizBloggers"  at Steve Rosenbaum - MediaBizBloggers.

 

 

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Comments

[Durango]

In our neck of the woods, one regional paper, the Rocky Mountain News disappeared completely. And the other, the Denver Post has been in a steep decline.

Now the Post only delivers on Sundays.

This spring I had the opportunity to visit New York City and read the Times. i was amazed at what I had been missing for years. Competent writers given enough ink to explain stories in detail. And lots and lots of smaller stories, no less interesting than the front page.

At one point the Denver Post was a quality newspaper. But that was years ago. It was looted by its publisher. Yet the decline was gradual so I did not notice the lack of quality.

And now we have NO regional newspaper.

Computers will never take the place of newspapers with good writers given the freedom to write good stories.

And what I saw of the NYTs this spring was excellent.

[littlechanges]

Basic rules of business also apply to the newspaper industry and, yes, even to the arrogant NYT. I cancelled my Times subscription, after 20+ faithful years, due to near daily calls to customer service over lack of consistent and clean delivery of my newspaper. Instead of fixing the simplest of problems, I would invariably be offered a 6-week discount off an already obscene $57/mo. After 8 months of what seemed like speaking into a vacuum, I simply gave up. It's not rocket science. I promptly turned around and subscribed with a much less expensive competitor and occasionally now peruse the Times for free online. No company is so indispensable as to be utterly stupid. The main goal of a company, as Drucker long ago noted, is to create customers ... not lose them.

[TruGal]

I love this story.
NOTHING feels as delicious as a fresh newspaper in the morning,

[LeroyJenkins]

NYT = FAIL,

THe NYT should have been a stalw/art against the o/bvious lie/s of the past administration and instead the NYT became a tool of pr/opaga/nda.

If the NYT, was to be a paper of record, of truth, Judith Miller's w/ar cries would have been investigated and edited out

[Durango]

True, without a doubt.

But those stories "of record" are only a small part of what a newspaper does.

And I fear a world without newspapers.

[conversefive]

When the NYT refuses to report the news is the day the NYT stops coming, and that day is soon to come. It has already reached the point of irrelevance.

[josephXY]

Danny Schechter, occasional contributor to the HuffPo last year wrote an interesting about how
the media failed in the subprime disaster. Among those who just failed to notice and for whom
the financial derivatives were simply too complex to be understood for a very long time: the NYT.
http://rinf.com/alt-news/media-news/where-was-media-when-sub-prime-disaster-unfolded/2854/

[DissedBeliever]

No one under the age of 50 gives a rat's ayussa about the demise of newspapers. Get over it, the world is changing. I canceled my NYTimes sub last year and never looked back. Parochial dinosaur media.

[larry278]

WTF, a lot of HP users over 50 don't give a rat's @&+$$ about the NYT either & drink tea, not coffee. I prefer iced tea & HP. The oil in coffee plays hell with my digestion. Besides, the NYT is the NYT. The NYT used to be America's only newspaper of record 50 or 60 years ago. The NYT can't be considered to be a newspaper of record in the 21st century.