Newspaper No More

So today I made a very momentous decision: I canceled my subscription to our morning newspaper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

I've always been a newspaper buff. I love waking up in the morning -- particularly on a Sunday morning -- getting the paper, and reading it while I drink my coffee. I grew up reading the Washington Post, the paper that will always set the standard in my opinion.

When I was a kid, I always started with the comics. Then when I got older, it was always the sports page to start. Eventually, I guess I matured enough that I moved on to starting with the front page, and then finally I started worrying about economics and investments, and that's when I moved to beginning my newspaper reading with the business section.

Even when newspapers put all their content on the internet, I still maintained my print subscription. Call me an old fogey, but I still read better (and enjoy reading much more) when I have a printed copy in front of me. I love the smell of newspaper, the texture of the newsprint, and just the act of reading the paper is a comforting ritual for me.

But now, over the past year or two, I've noticed something: I read less and less of it. In fact, I'm back to starting with reading the comics, and not much else.

So what happened? Two things, really.

The first is probably the obvious one: the Internet. As a national and international news vehicle, the daily newspaper is dead -- I get that news much faster, and from a much broader range of sources, using the Internet. So most of what I see in the morning paper is stuff that I knew the night before.

Still, though, there's much more to a newspaper than just breaking news. There's in-depth reporting in a way that just doesn't happen on TV, and again I grew up with a newspaper that (to this child of the 70s, anyway) defined investigative newspaper journalism.

And this brings me to the second reason I'm dropping the Plain Dealer: most of its in-depth national and international stories have the following by-lines: "The Washington Post", "The Los Angeles Times", etc. In other words, it's a reprint service, reprinting stories that I read several days or even a week earlier on the website of the Post or Times. Who needs that?

So I would open up the Plain Dealer, and immediately throw away 90% of it. What's the 10% that's left over? Comics, local news, and coupons. Do I need those?

Local news: yes, this is important. But the Plain Dealer has a website, and I can get all the news there.

Coupons: as cheap as I am, coupons are less and less useful. The coupons are generally for overpriced name brand items, so why don't I just skip them and buy store brand, which is just fine by me? Lately, I manage to find maybe $1-$2 worth of usable coupons in the Sunday paper. Spending $20/mo to get $6 in coupons is a losing proposition.

Comics: Those also are almost all online. Yes, they come out a few weeks or a month after the printed version, but after a month away from the newspaper, the ones online will be new to me every day.

Anyway, after wondering for a while whether or not I really need a subscription, this month the Plain Dealer upped their subscription price by about 25% and that was the final straw. So long, guys. It's been a nice run.

So what will I miss?

• the plastic bag it was delivered in: that made a great poop bag for dog walks
• the newspaper itself, which was useful for putting down next to the cat litterboxes
• the crossword puzzle. Crossword puzzles are meant to be done on newspaper stock. It's not the same printing them out on my printer. I'll survive, but I'll miss the newspaper's texture.

So throw out its use as a barrier against pet waste, and all I've got left to cling to is the way newsprint absorbs ink while doing the crossword. And that wasn't enough. So there you have it, an end of an era.

I am a bit worried that my mom's gonna yell at me for doing this, though.