About 10 months ago The Birmingham News parent company decreased circulation from seven days a week to three. In Birmingham we get the paper on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. First off, call me "old school" if you want. I liked getting the paper seven days a week. Obviously I use the Internet. I read news reports online. But, the newspaper allows me to do something that the Internet will never be able to do. It lets me relax and unwind at the end of the day. I sit at a computer screen all day long and the last thing I want to do is come home and keep doing the same thing just to find out what is going on in the world. I can skim through an entire newspaper in less than ten minutes, filtering the news reports I want to read. Try doing that on the Internet.
Since the Birmingham News executed this plan the level of timely and relevant information has diminished. For example, the Mercedes Marathon was held in Birmingham on a Sunday in February. The news did a pretty good job on Friday letting everyone know there was going to be race on Sunday. However, the after race coverage was non existent. There was a brief article published on The Birmingham News-AL.com web site Sunday and Monday morning but coverage was non existent for the Wednesday paper edition. This scenario has occurred over and over again for major news events that break late Saturday or Sunday since the circulation reduction was implemented.
Even dying does not fit into the news cycle anymore. If you die Saturday night the earliest your obituary can be posted in the newspaper is Wednesday. On Wednesday we get Dear Abby and all of the comics for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on Wednesday. Talk about sugar over load. It's like holding your desserts for three days and then eating all three of them at once. My kids used to be avid readers of the newspaper granted it was mostly comics but they were still reading something that did not involve a plug. I've noticed a decline in their interest in reading the paper due to the circulation change.
So, our local paper has said that newspapers are a dying industry and since it's gonna die anyway let's go ahead and kill it off. I suspect The Birmingham News will eventually go away. Somebody will either come in and take it over or they will go to once a week just so there can be some venue to send out all of the weeky flyers. I am still hanging on to getting the paper three days a week. However, my loyalty to the paper is fading fast. I am even considering subscribing to The Tuscaloosa News. They somehow have figured out how to publish a paper seven days a week. I hope someone comes in and realizes although there are competing media alternatives out there if you put a quality and timely product out there people will buy it regardless of what format it is in.
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