Sign O' the Times

The economic crisis is taking its toll. The New York Times is diligently trying to save itself as it continues to suffer steep decline in advertising revenues. Unfortunately, declining readership is a sign of the times. Ironically, this news comes a day after it was announced that the New York Times won 5 Pulitzer prizes for Journalism.

The New York Times, the standard bearer of "intelligent" news is still winning awards but it just may die anyway. It has already sold and/or leased most of its midtown Manhattan headquarters and has implemented a 5% reduction in employee paychecks for the remainder of 2009. Incidentally, the New York Times Company also owns the Boston Globe and it is attempting to get those employees to agree to $20,000,000 in concessions or shut down the paper. The Globe lost $50,000,000 last year and is on track to lose $85,000,000 this year.

So, it doesn't help that subscribers like me are considering giving up their beloved subscriptions to this and other publications. Lately, it just seems that every Monday I gather up reams of unread newspaper and toss directly into the recycling, hoping that the next week I will get a chance to read more. However, more weekends than not, after a brief perusal, both my husband and I run out of time to truly sit and read. Besides, with the 24 hour news cycle, we have seen most of the headlines by the time the newspaper arrives.

In fact, I know I read more New York Times on the web than the actual paper that shows up every weekend at my house. So, by all accounts I should give up my subscription except I feel terribly about adding to the demise of this great paper. What a quandary. The upside is that we pay more for the paper to be delivered Saturday and Sunday (which they force you to do) than it costs to buy the Sunday paper on the newsstand. So, we can buy it as we need it without spending money every week to have it and not read it.

But, if we subscribers keep giving it up, then where will the great paper be when we are ready to read it. Us lapsing subscribers are the biggest part of their problem; hence the rapid decline in readership for print media across the board. We are passively allowing our die-hard subscriptions to lapse primarily for the same reasons.

Some newspapers are actually considering charging for their web content so people like me stop reading all the articles for free online in lieu of a subscription. But, like most people, I am unwilling to pay for a web subscription to anything. I suppose I can always find "good" news for free so I could just carry on but I don't want to help kill the New York Times by cancelling my subscription. Then what will we be left with, sensationalist rubbish from the competition? I rue the day but it really may be time for me to say sayonara to the Times.