OK. I admit it. I’m addicted.
For 32 years I’ve been getting my fix every morning after retrieving my drug from my driveway. But now, the soaring cost of this addictive substance might thwart my continued reliance on it.
I’m talking about the Colorado Springs Gazette, a daily newspaper where I worked for 16 years before bailing out in the face of bankruptcy to join the Colorado Springs Indy in 2009. (The Gazette was eventually rescued by billionaire Phil Anschutz.)
Since 1993, the year I hired on at the Gazette as a reporter, I’ve faithfully subscribed, despite the ever-increasing cost. (I might have gotten it free while working there; I simply don’t recall.) But now, it’s taken another 16% leap, to $820 per year. That’s $2.25 per day.
So, let’s look at the alternatives and do some comparison shopping.
I could subscribe to home delivery of The Denver Post for $364 a year, or to USA Today (it arrives via U.S. Postal Service) for $275 a year. (All prices cited come from newspapers’ websites.) The Colorado Sun, a statewide digital-only news site, is free, though you can become a member by donating as little as $5 a month to the nonprofit operation.
Believe it or not, I could even sign up to get the paper version of The New York Times for $480 a year, though it’s unclear how it’s delivered.
The Pueblo Chieftain advertises a rate of $35 per month ($420 a year) for delivery of papers Sunday through Friday, but I seriously doubt it’s dropped in Colorado Springs.
Two other local papers, the Colorado Spring Independent, the reconstituted version of the Indy that comes out twice a month, and the weekly Pikes Peak Bulletin both offer mail delivery at $75 per year. Both also have websites for digital delivery.
On a national level, readers can subscribe to The Week magazine, published 48 times a year, for $150, or The Atlantic Monthly for $89 a year. I’m a subscriber to the former and believe it’s a bargain at that price.
There’s something about holding a paper in my hands that got me hooked.
But none of those options provide home newspaper delivery of hyper-local daily news like the Gazette does, at least for now.
Look, I get it. I’ve been a journalist since 1978, roughly 15 years before there was such a thing as “digital” delivery, which generally dominates the news landscape these days. Even my hometown newspaper, The Lakin (Kansas) Independent offers a digital version. (I subscribe to the paper product, which arrives weekly in the mail at $44.50 a year.)
I guess there’s something about holding a paper in my hands that got me hooked, and now I face the prospect of a budget-busting renewal or going cold turkey from my addiction.
Not that the Gazette is a stellar example of local journalism. Though it trumpets that it’s a “two-time Pulitzer Prize winner,” those honors were bestowed years ago. Dave Curtin won for a special section feature story in 1990, and Dave Philipps captured the national reporting award in 2014. Philipps, who promptly thereafter was hired by The New York Times, won another Pulitzer in 2022 with a team of reporters.
Being a faithful daily reader who brings a trained journalist’s eye to the Gazette, every day I spot errors big and small. Like the reference to gold magnate Winfield Scott Stratton as William Scott Stratton? How does that make it past a copy editor? Or a recent weather story that contained a word-for-word repeat of roughly half the story. Neither misstep resulted in a correction, despite the paper’s policy of correcting “errors of fact.” It’s an undeniable fact that it takes a herculean effort to churn out 28 or more pages every single day, but some of these errors are bush league.
Some Gazette coverage is serviceable while other stories lack context or what I’d consider essential facts. Like a long piece describing School District 11’s $100 million plan to overhaul Palmer High School, which fai led to report whether the school’s enrollment is growing, declining or staying the same. Or the paper’s recalcitrance in asking pointed questions on an array of issues. I won’t even get into the paper’s strident extreme right-wing editorial view, which led some readers to drop it like a hot potato years ago.
All that said, I still start my day with the Gazette and a cup of coffee and occasionally am pleasantly surprised at the coverage it offers. Obviously. I continue to subscribe.
But $820 a year? Who can afford that? Actually, I’ve been surprised the Gazette hasn’t gone 100% digital.
Being the tightwad that I am, I decided to call customer service. I was told that once you’re a subscriber, the price only goes up and up. To get a temporary lower rate, you have to stop getting it for six months. In fact, the Gazette rep told me there are many different rates, which she wouldn’t reveal. The paper starts a reader out with one rate but it “doesn’t last forever,” she said, because like any business, it has to cover costs. There are no special deals – not for seniors, long-time customers or anybody, she said. The sky-high home delivery rates are designed to assure that home delivery continues, she said.
After all, why would the Gazette abandon its print version? At the rates it charges, the paper is hauling in millions, and I guess if there’s one thing that billionaires need more of, it’s more millions.
