News

We finally gave up on the local paper. The delivery had become erratic and the price had been raised once more. The price increase was the final straw and it felt good to say, “No more!”, although it was Laurae that had the privilege of actually doing that. She said that the person who listened to her explanation for quitting the service was quite sympathetic, but could offer nothing to change our minds.

Upon reflection, I can see the demise of most small town newspapers as costs go up and subscribers fade away. We already subscribe to the Sacramento Bee, which handles foreign, national and regional news well enough. Local news is rarely found in the Bee and so for that I will turn to the internet version of the local paper. Yes, the one we just stopped subscribing to. And the Bee won’t be around that much longer either, as almost all news can be found on the internet. I already subscribe to 3 or 4 news services (free!). So it doesn’t make sense to subscribe to a daily newspaper just for the comics page!

It’s usually said that we need the newspaper for the local ads and I can see where local merchants could get together and put out a weekly internet advertising mailing. Perhaps there is a business opportunity for someone? Imagine one commercial website for the Butte/Glenn county area. On the website would be advertising for the local grocery stores, department stores, drug stores…the same stuff you see in the Wednesday edition of your local paper. Maybe you could include a built in shopping list with check boxes. That would be cool; just print your shopping list. And you could print coupons as well! Developing and managing the mailing list would be tough at first, but it has to easier than maintaining a printing press.

I don’t know about you, but we already do a lot of shopping on-line. And we get specialized advertising all of the time. But the difference is; we allow the advertising we want and block the others. Newspapers can’t offer that.