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Ask HN: Degraded reliability in print newspaper deliveries?

1 pointsby HuShifangover 1 year ago
I&#x27;m curious if others have experienced this. I&#x27;d subscribed to the <i>Financial Times</i> last year -- my first ever print subscription to a newspaper -- in the interest of better-absorbing the information therein, giving my kids something offline to browse, and supporting quality journalism. It did not go well -- despite living in a major sub&#x2F;urban area (a densely populated, major suburb in the SF Bay Area), delivery was extremely inconsistent and unreliable: the paper would arrive fairly late most days, and would be successfully delivered perhaps 4-5 times a week (almost never on Saturdays). The FT&#x27;s customer service people were consistently considerate and empathetic, but interventions they made with the distributor (the Bay Area News Group) would have short-term effects, if any, and the non-deliveries would soon resume again. I finally cancelled today (though, caveat emptor, the FT has a rotten policy that it only pro-rates your cancellation if you cancel within the first 10 days of a subscription period, which means I have several more weeks of occasionally getting a paper.)<p>Setting aside Bay Area-specific pathologies, I wonder if print journalism isn&#x27;t simply in a death spiral -- if there aren&#x27;t few enough remaining subscribers that cost-cutting and general malaise means that the service and its reliability is severely degraded, regardless of specific paper&#x2F;distributor and location. Would love to hear others&#x27; experiences with this.

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