Mercury News renewal rate - ridiculous!

[bigdumbgod]

Originally Posted by marcopolo666

news is free online.

Yeah, I had a shock when I got the renewal notice. I'm dumping the Merc subscription.

News online is not free when you figure in your monthly fees for your phone package, and all the popup crap, and that the online version presents much less content than the print version. Also, online news is no news when your gadget is out of range, or out of gas.

[MediocreButArrogant]

Ever since they lowered my rate to $166 a year they've renewed automatically at the same rate. Just call and threaten to cancel unless they lower your rate.

[Heidi60]

Originally Posted by MediocreButArrogant

Well, I decided $442/yr was just a bit too much for the few sections of the paper we read so I called to cancel, and they offered me a $156/yr rate.

I expect this to trigger a bunch of "I can't believe people still get their news from newspapers" posts. That's not why we subscribe. We subscribe for the home and garden sections, and food sections, things which are either missing or poorly experienced online.

When we cancelled they called us for months making it difficult to get rid of them. If I feel the urge to read the paper I just buy it at the news stand so I don't have to deal with them.

[jbunniii]

I hadn't seen a physical newspaper in some years, but happened to check out the newspaper rack at the new(ish) Books Inc in Santa Clara. I was amazed at how tiny they have become, in all dimensions: length, width, and thickness. Even the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, etc. are smaller than the dinkiest small-town papers used to be 10 years ago. Yet they want to charge more money than ever? No thanks. The only source of news that I think is still good enough to justify paying for is The Economist, and even they aren't what they once were.

[ggcd951]

mercurynews is a joke, i stopped visiting after they wont quit giving a pop-up on every visit to their page. Bringing up unwanted pop-up ad to visitor's face is inherently crude, desperate measure of getting ad money, but i am sure it results in loss of customers unfortunately. Another liberal news-crap with full of crap content (as well as ads, so much ads it actually slows down the browser to almost a halt) is a sfgate.com in which my comment account was de-activated for no reason other than giving my opinions on some of their articles.

The only webcontent these days that delivers ad in reasonably non-instrusive way seems to be facebook and twitter these days.

[citizensadvocate]

These days I would wonder why newspapers cost so much, $2 for little news print and bunch of ads. And news sources are very one sided in their reporting and almost only share highly "Liberal" progressive views, they will ignore readers letters if their view is ever so different.

i.e The Mercury News seems to strongly support ordinances in banning single use bags and forcing stores to charge for paper bags and only seem to report how happy shoppers adopted to the new policy even though many residents were mad when these policies started in San Jose and other cities. They wrote in masses to the newspaper but were ignored. Yet they keep wrapping their papers in single use plastic bags near storm drains. Those bags are really far less reusable than bags one get in the grocery store. What hypocrites.

Therefore I used to be a loyal Mercury News customer but not anymore.

[Cloudy Dayz]

Originally Posted by citizensadvocate

These days I would wonder why newspapers cost so much, $2 for little news print and bunch of ads..

As the circulation decreases, the cost per subscriber of running a newspaper increases. That's why newspapers now cost more for less.

The only time I touch a print newspaper is once a month when I go to the barbershop, waiting to get my haircut. Everytime I pick it up, I feel like I have gone through a timewarp and been transported back to 1990. Except the paper is a lot smaller than in 1990. I can always finish reading it before my turn for my haircut comes up.

[citizensadvocate]

Nowadays the news sources are charging quite a bit for reading the "paper" online as well.

One interesting discovery I have is that one Chinese language newspaper, the World Journal still charges the same rate (50 cents) as 20 years ago and the amount of newsprint contents inside did not change much. I wonder how they stayed that way all these years as back then 50 cents was also the standard rate for local newspapers which contained more newsprint compared to today.

[gone down south]

The newstand price of a newspaper used to be essentially irrelevant, it covered the extra expenses of driving it to the kiosk or your front door but not much more - everything was paid for by the ads.

Fastforward to today, and the ad market basically doesn't exist any more. Craigslist has the personals, eBay the For Sale, Monster.com the jobs listings, and Facebook the local merchant ads. The whole economy of print news has pretty much disappeared, except for niche papers like the Chinese one mentioned.

[citizensadvocate]

Originally Posted by bigdumbgod

News online is not free when you figure in your monthly fees for your phone package, and all the popup crap, and that the online version presents much less content than the print version. Also, online news is no news when your gadget is out of range, or out of gas.

Very true, also many news websites are actually charging for reading articles online as well.