The Lede (Birmingham, Mobile, Huntsville: credit card, purchase, college)

[RocketDawg]

Does the subscription cost of $4.95/month or $48/year get all three of the Huntsville Times, Birmingham News, and Mobile Press-register, or does it just get "newspapers" for one of the cities?

[dwhisent]

Originally Posted by RocketDawg

Does the subscription cost of $4.95/month or $48/year get all three of the Huntsville Times, Birmingham News, and Mobile Press-register, or does it just get "newspapers" for one of the cities?

As my reward for being a loyal subscriber to the Hsv Times, instead of $4.95/mo I have the honor of paying $8/month. And no, it is only one city (it's called the Huntsville Lede). And comparing it to a newspaper is kind of a stretch. They do try to add improvements, like last week they added a bunch of puzzles of different types - with no instructions on how to use them.

[RocketDawg]

Originally Posted by dwhisent

As my reward for being a loyal subscriber to the Hsv Times, instead of $4.95/mo I have the honor of paying $8/month. And no, it is only one city (it's called the Huntsville Lede). And comparing it to a newspaper is kind of a stretch. They do try to add improvements, like last week they added a bunch of puzzles of different types - with no instructions on how to use them.

Are you saying it's more like al.com instead of a real newspaper? Al.com is terrible - college sports is the"front page" more often than not.

[dwhisent]

Originally Posted by RocketDawg

Are you saying it's more like al.com instead of a real newspaper? Al.com is terrible - college sports is the"front page" more often than not.

I don't typically go to al.com, but at a quick look it seems different, there are a few similarities. The front cover is usually a local or sometimes a state headline but it's an image, not the story itself, and usually has a couple other headlines on it. It is mostly one story per page, usually one picture with it, mostly local and state, then has some national and international short items. It (unfortunately) has a few pages of opinions which are mostly liberal, I wish they would at least pretend to be balanced. It does have a large sports section. Obituaries. Finally the most important part, the comics. And puzzles at the end. And there's usually one podcast. Clicking on any of the pictures brings up info on it. Hope that helps.

[johnsonkk]

Originally Posted by dwhisent

I don't typically go to al.com, but at a quick look it seems different, there are a few similarities. The front cover is usually a local or sometimes a state headline but it's an image, not the story itself, and usually has a couple other headlines on it. It is mostly one story per page, usually one picture with it, mostly local and state, then has some national and international short items. It (unfortunately) has a few pages of opinions which are mostly liberal, I wish they would at least pretend to be balanced. It does have a large sports section. Obituaries. Finally the most important part, the comics. And puzzles at the end. And there's usually one podcast. Clicking on any of the pictures brings up info on it. Hope that helps.

Better to go yellow hammer news then. AL dot com is owned and operated by out of state “workers” and its doubtful they turn a profit, which you would think drives any news publication to continue. It makes sense to question any business would continue to function while losing money.

[cooldiver]

Originally Posted by dwhisent

I don't typically go to al.com, but at a quick look it seems different, there are a few similarities. The front cover is usually a local or sometimes a state headline but it's an image, not the story itself, and usually has a couple other headlines on it. It is mostly one story per page, usually one picture with it, mostly local and state, then has some national and international short items. It (unfortunately) has a few pages of opinions which are mostly liberal, I wish they would at least pretend to be balanced. It does have a large sports section. Obituaries. Finally the most important part, the comics. And puzzles at the end. And there's usually one podcast. Clicking on any of the pictures brings up info on it. Hope that helps.

Do they have Dilbert?

[RocketDawg]

Originally Posted by cooldiver

Do they have Dilbert?

al.com doesn't but the various Lede versions may (pretty sure they still have comics, but I'm not a subscriber but might try the Huntsville one at the yearly rate).

I don't even know what the Dilbert guy did. Seems that everybody's hypersensitive these days though. I'm sure he's got enough money even if his comic strip or whatever it's called is never printed again by any newspaper.

[dwhisent]

Nope. The Lede has a prominent paragraph that says they have dropped Dilbert.

He got incensed by a poll that asked the question to black people whether it was OK to be white. Only 53% said yes. He went off on a very racist rant. He said stuff he should not have said, and words have consequences.

[RocketDawg]

Originally Posted by dwhisent

Nope. The Lede has a prominent paragraph that says they have dropped Dilbert.

He got incensed by a poll that asked the question to black people whether it was OK to be white. Only 53% said yes. He went off on a very racist rant. He said stuff he should not have said, and words have consequences.

I was never into the Dilbert strip anyway, so no great loss as far as i'm concerned.

Do you think The Lede is worth subscribing to? It would be nice to have a good source for local news. I might try it, but typically speaking, it's very difficult to unsubscribe once you start (based on my Times Subscription issues).

[dijkstra]

Originally Posted by RocketDawg

I was never into the Dilbert strip anyway, so no great loss as far as i'm concerned.

Do you think The Lede is worth subscribing to? It would be nice to have a good source for local news. I might try it, but typically speaking, it's very difficult to unsubscribe once you start (based on my Times Subscription issues).

To solve difficulties in unsubscribing/cancelling, I started using a temporary one use credit card number for them so they could not automatically charge me for renewals. One of my credit cards has them and I can simply request one from the app and use it for a one time purchase to prevent fraud. Before that I had a couple of instances where I kept getting a monthly charge for something I had tried to cancel multiple times and I simply reported my credit card lost so they would cancel it and send me one with a new number......problem solved. Funny thing is, that company repeatedly sent me notices every month saying my payment did not process and also kept sending me bills for late payments even though I had called and went through the entire cancellation process three times.