The Gray Lady isn't a cheap date

My first newspaper subscription was as a freshman in college.  I believe it was the San Francisco Examiner.  It was delivered right to the door of my dorm room.  I thought that was very cool, and I felt very adult.  

I grew up in a family that subscribed to both a morning (Portland Oregonian) paper and an evening (Longview Daily News) paper.  I assumed everyone read two newspapers a day; it therefore seemed mandatory for the 18-year-old adult that I'd become to read at least one.  Even so, considering my financial plight, I would have been too money-conscious to have subscribed if the price were more than a nominal amount.

I've been trying to recall what I paid for the Examiner. I paid about $2.98 per year for  Newsweek, a weekly news magazine, but that was a special rate for college students. I wouldn't have subscribed to a newspaper if its price wasn't somewhat proportional.  The per issue cost at a newsstand was five cents, so maybe $1.25 or $1.50 per month.

Why do I continue brooding on this subject?  Because two days ago I received a notice from the New York Times advising me that they were -- again -- raising my subscription price.  I tend to roll my eyes at these notices, and then continue subscribing -- especially since the Times deducts the price from my checking account, sparing me the pain of actually filling out a check.

But I did a little calculating.  According to the notice, I'll be paying $20.25/week for home delivery.  That's $1,053 per year.  Really?  I mean that's a pretty big chunk of money for a newspaper.  Even for an excellent newspaper.  Even in today's inflated dollars. 

Especially when the Times offers an impressive on-line version, which often -- to my irritation -- publishes the best features to be found in the approaching Sunday edition days before Sunday.  The on-line edition is included in my print subscription, but I could subscribe to it alone for just $9.99 per month for the first year, and $15.99 per month thereafter.  We're talking $119.99 for the first year, and $191.88 per year thereafter.

All things considered, I feel like an idiot subscribing to the print edition.  Except for a few considerations.  I like to spread the paper out on the floor while I read it.  I like to take it to a restaurant to read while I have breakfast.  I like fetching it from my front yard, just as I liked opening my dorm room door and finding it as a student.  I'm fixed in my ways.  I'm still the child of my parents, good people who subscribed to two papers per day.  I'm a romanticist.

But I'm not sure how much longer my romanticism will support what has become a very expensive habit.  For now, I guess, I'll let inertia carry me along into the Times's latest subscription price zone. 

At some point, however, I'll have to admit to myself not only that I'm paying a fortune for an outmoded technology, but that I've become a bit of an irritant to a newspaper that really wants to focus on digital content -- not on consuming and distributing vast amounts of newsprint.  They won't be offended -- to the contrary, in fact -- if I go digital.

But I'll be sad.