HuShifang

I'm curious if others have experienced this. I'd subscribed to the Financial Times 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/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'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.)

Setting aside Bay Area-specific pathologies, I wonder if print journalism isn't simply in a death spiral -- if there aren'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/distributor and location. Would love to hear others' experiences with this.