Our subscription to the Star-Advertiser has run out and I’m trying to decide what to do.
We want to read the newspaper, but we find that on most days, we don’t read the whole newspaper, and all that newsprint piles up and becomes a nagging recycling job (although it’s less paper than it used to be when there was more news).
How about digital? There’s reading online, but you don’t really get the newspaper experience. You miss all the clues that come with placement of stories, the way issues are played out visually, etc.
And my initial inclination was that the e-edition, delivered electronically, doesn’t suffice. This is the version that is delivered via email each morning. It shows up as a thumbnail version of the printed newspaper, which allows you to expand and move around on any page or story. It works, but it isn’t convenient. Not ready as a replacement for the print edition.
But yesterday I belatedly “discovered” PressReader, the app for reading the digital edition on an iPad or iPhone.
It’s a whole different and quite natural experience. PressReader may be what makes a digital subscription viable as a reading experience.
The downside is that the appearance of the e-edition is often quite delayed. Yesterday, the email announcing availability of the e-edition wasn’t sent until 9:25 a.m. If you get up early and want to read the newspaper, this is going to be a frustrating experience.
Has anyone out there switched from the print edition to digital-only and the e-edition of the Star-Advertiser? I would love to hear about your experience, especially if PressReader is as satisfying as it initially appears.
Discover more from i L i n d
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
“PressReader may be what saves makes a digital subscription viable as a reading experience.”
There are two verbs in this sentence. (Just thought that you should know….)
Thanks. Now properly verbed.
“verbed” ?
I always thought “verb” is a noun. But here you’re using it as either a verb (in the past tense, saying that something has been verbed) or as an adjective (describing the condition of the thing as being verbed).
I love how flexible the English language is, and that we who speak it fluently have license to engage in creative usages; and that everyone understands a new usage even upon seeing it for the first time.
I am a well-gruntled English-speaker (opposite of disgruntled)
Using a noun as a verb — for example, when one “googles” something — is one of the unique tendencies of American English. I don’t think that it is accepted well in other dialects of the English language. For instance, a verb used as a noun (by adding an “ing”) is known as a gerund (e.g., “Learning is fun.”); but I do not think that there is a word for using a noun as a verb, at least not yet.
Just tried out PressReader. It looks good but nothing like holding a paper in your hands. I can’t find any mention of what it costs to buy the editions but unless you want to keep up with a particular paper you can’t get in the printed form I’d stick with online versions and not read old news that printed editions are stuck with.
I have both the printed and the electronic versions. My daughter and my husband use my password to read it at work. But, I would never give up the printed version, because I value the coupons for restaurants, etc., as well as the ads for travel agencies.
Despite subscribing (and registering for e-edition), I can’t send a link to an article online w/o the recipient running into a pay wall. Certainly curtails circulation in cyberspace.
I am normally a Luddite when it comes to technology, but reading papers on a computer has disabled my enjoyment of print versions. And if there is ever an app to transmit the smell of books, I will be happily living in a completely post-paper world.
Had a subscription for nearly a decade, then went cold-turkey after Honolulu shrunk to 1 daily newspaper. We wondered if we would miss having a newspaper in the living room, especially on a relaxing Sunday.
But we didn’t miss it, especially during a busy workweek (and busy weekends).
And that was more than a year ago. For us, digital is an excellent upgrade from paper. I still buy a paper once in a while, much like I still like putting on an LP. But the iPod is a better fit.
Norm,
The SA.com is 95% of the print version. The only real diff is the breaking news……so I don’ t see how you avoid the “old news” as you say. Ian, I would make the switch since you don’t value the advertising in the paper. That’s about half what you’re paying for.
The e-edition has the advertising that appears in the print edition, but I don’t know about inserts. However, does MidWeek duplicate on many inserts?
Buster, I can’t speak for Norm, but the “old news” usually is the National/World section, which doesn’t exist in the online version (although the site does have some breaking wire news).
I hope this makes sense. More coffee!
Buster the papers I saw in PressReader looked like pdf’s of the print edition. If so do they still include breaking news? My point was an online edition of any paper should have updates throughout the day. But not PDF versions of the print edition.
The SA has an iPad app. Most issues arrive earlier than print ever did. If you sign up as a new subscriber, the price might be considerably less.
I really like it. Almost exactly like reading the paper, but you can’t share sections. Zooming is great. Pictures arer clearer than print.
I signed up for the SA e edition (replica) and it works great. Ian, I think something must have been a problem unique to your device because I rec”d mine around 515am or so…….
The second biggest thing about paying for something that used to be “free” (discounting computer & internet access) is that these greedy folks at the Star Advertiser are charging more for local zip codes than mainland, as I think you pointed out in the past!
The last I looked $50/annual local and “only” $10/year mainland.
This is no Kaamaiana rate; it’s more like a penalty!
P.S. I tried to post something (with another nom de plume) a couple of days ago on your article “Does Hawaii’s small-town cultural style inhibit openness and assertiveness?” but your spam stopper evidently killed it…and no way was it spam, dude! Maybe you need to review your “rejects?”
That’s one of the dangers of not providing a valid email address or registering. If there’s a judgement call about your comment, I have no way to check with you on it.
Thanks.
Not that it matters, but if I’m not mistaken I entered this same email address. Oh well, we can all point at the trials and suffering of the digital age, appropriately with our middle fingers, I expect.
Value seems to be the theme… Coupns in print edition should be available to on line readers for printing. The “Kama’aina Penalty” subscription says volumes. But the overarching reality is that the content of interest in the SA is less than half of the content found in the combined SB and Adv before the “collapse”. So nothing worth subscribing to the SA in the first place and certainly not now. Rss feeds, blogs and social networking are the best sources of diverse news. Sadly, the SA is not among them and does not have enough content to make it missed as it cowers behind its paywall monopoly. Their first announcement that they would be “charging for premium content” prompted the reaction of hope that they would start producing some. Oh well…
Because I do not have access to a a modern computer – I only have regular access to a 2003 Dell desktop – I decided last fall to switch back to reading a “real” newspaper like I used to a decade ago.
On average – given the slow-w-w-w-w downloads and the need to re-boot two or three times because of the pop-ups & unwanted click-tos, I found that I was spending nearly two hours a day just reading the Star-Advertiser in the morning.
Now it takes me about 40 minutes to read a “real” paper plus I can take it with me on the bus or into “the facility” or a coffee house or restaurant or even into bed – although that only happened while recovering from a challenged heart micro/mini-attack.
We did sign up for the on-line edition, but I only use it for breaking local news and the occasional comment sections – but the latter only happens only once or twice a month.
Yes, I know that iPads, Smart Phones, and laptop computers can be used in many of the public places listed above, but for those of us who cannot afford the new technologies, a “real” paper is far more efficent than sitting at a desk waiting for something readable to come on the screen.
“Their first announcement that they would be “charging for premium content” prompted the reaction of hope that they would start producing some. Oh well…”
Haw! Made me smile!
I thought it was a bit disingenuous of the SA to say they would be charging for “premium” content. They should have just said they would be charging for every morsel that is staff-generated, including rewrites of press releases. “Premium?” Only if that’s their standard. I’m a subscriber, who reads the print edition and checks online only for breaking news.
Re pricing: trying to look at it as a business model and past the emotional “mainlander vs us locals” thing the approach makes perfect sense. There is interest from people outside of Hawaii in the SA site but not for $50 a year. They don’t live here thus the site (news content) has less value to them and it is priced accordingly. I don’t see the problem but I’m realtively new to the islands and still don’t grasp the locals vs the mainlanders thing you all seem to enjoy. BTW, doesn’t Oceanic Cable charge far less for the UH pay for view on the outer islands than they do on Oahu?? Why is that different??