Well, it’s that time of year again. Our subscription to the Star-Advertiser runs out next month and a renewal notice just arrived in the mail. Now we’ve got to make the decision once again–stay with the print version or go digital only.
Last year, we went round and round on the question, but ended up staying with the regular subscription with a daily paper delivered to our house when offered discounted rate.
The full annual price of the Star-Advertiser is $239.40, but we were eventually offered the home delivery package for $166.56.
Meda prefers have the newspaper in hand, but now that the city has eliminated the recycling bin at Kaaawa School, recycling the stack of newsprint is more of a chore. It may be enough to finally push us to digital delivery. The S-A wants $60 from local residents for a digital subscription, while mainland residents can sign up for just $15 per year.
I think the $239.40 is the same as Civil Beat’s standard price, but I couldn’t find any info on CB subscriptions readily available on their web site. That was a little weird.
I would appreciate any further thoughts on the transition from print to digital delivery. If you’ve made the move, how has it gone for you?
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Info on CB subscriptions can be found by scrolling to the bottom of their home page:
http://www.civilbeat.com/info/membership/
Unlike the print edition, a family cannot easily share one digital subscription. Only one device can be signed on at a time. If someone forgets to log out, the other is out of luck.
We continue with the print subscription and enjoy being able to read different sections at the same time. It’s easy to pass a story back and forth for discussion.
The print subscription does include digital, which Larry uses regularly. I find it so cumbersome to (1) ask Larry to log out (2) log in and read the article I want and (3) log out that I have given up altogether and do not attempt to read the S-A online.
So if you are thinking about going with just the digital subscription, you are really looking at $120, not $60.
I use the digital version for the last year and don’t miss the printed version. Occasionally, I will buy a Sunday paper to look at the coupons, travel section and Dining Out insert, but have been doing this less and less since the start of the year.
I opted for S/A digital only at the beginning of this year.
Pluses- saving trees, costs less, easy to save articles of interest, easy to navigate
Minuses- have to print out the Sunday X-words and I miss the Sunday adverts and I do miss the physical paper – but not enough to pay for it.
Another question related to this, to wit: Is it true that you cannot access entire issues in the archive? Just the articles they list as available? If so, I am not happy with that one. An article can get lost pretty fast, if you know what I mean.
Well, some people just get the Fri-Sat-Sun printed edition and online access to the daily is included. Personally, I like the paper because I can scan the whole paper and see articles at a glance, rather than scroll and click menu items, wait for the page to load. I notice I miss articles online that I easily come across in the paper, plus I don’t think AP or NYT articles in the paper version are on SA online.
correction: ONLY today I realized the online SA does have AP articles… I never scrolled DOWN far enough on the page.
We went back to subscrbing to a “real” paper nearly two years ago because I was sick & tired of the flashing ads and the time it took to download selected articles.
I also couldn’t carry a desktop computer into the bathroom, the bedroom, the car, or on the bus.
However, by subscribing to a “real” paper, I also get an electronic subscription which I use on a regular basis to read “Breaking News” items.
With respect to your recycling concerns, I have driven by your community hundreds of times over the past several years and see blue, gray and green bins placed at the edge of people’s properties for pickup by the City’s Department of Environmental Services.
Do you have friends living along the highway or in the flat areas of your community who would be willing to let you drop off your recyclables and greenwaste once a month?
Colleagues of ours who live up on Roundtop do that and all it costs them every couple of months is a bag of malassadas or a pizza from Costco for friends who live a mile or so down the hill. .
Anyone else heard of print/online subscription being offered for $15 (yes, $15) for a year? Friend in the Mililani area got it in the mail.
yes. i live in Mililani and got the same mega-deal a couple months ago.
i immediately accepted it.
are we the only neighborhood that got it????
I switched two months ago to only the digital version. I was reading more of the digital version anyway. What I don’t like though are the ads. If I read it on my iPad, there are times when the entire homepage is 100% ads and I need to scroll to get a peek at content. In addition to having more ads than a vegas casino, the site tosses in popup ads. I realize they need to earn revenue but the current ad strategy is heavy.
The main reason for the switch was also having to recycle a ton of paper each month.
I have been a user of the online version all along and was fine with forking over the monthly fee when that was instituted. I still ended up buying a lot of news stand editions to check on display ads (part of my business.) But, adding the new print replica feature has fixed that. I really like the simplicity of scanning the paid advertising by displaying full thumbnail sets, and browsing back issues via the simplified calendar search feature. I have no need for paper version at all…and have plenty of MidWeek’s for the cat box.
I got one of those $20 for two years offers. I have no idea why I was targeted. But it has turned out like a cheap buffet when you get sick of too much quantity and no quality. I am not interested in the paper version any more. It just makes a mess in my house. We appreciate the Sunday ads. But even that is only for a quick read in the bathroom. As far the electronic version, I am even too lazy to log in half the time. I read the headline and get the rest of the story on one of the television sites or here or Civil Beat or google search or whatever.
i got the same deal.
unfortunately, we read about half the delivered papers. and i rarely log on to the web site. if there was more investigative reporting and in-depth analysis, i would read more. i promise.
I hear you, but isn’t the “cheap buffet” more palatable at $10/year rather than at $166/year? Maybe Ian will get “the offer” before he ponies up the hundred sixty-six bucks.
If I see a headline online that I’m interested in reading, I just pick up an already-read paper @ Sbux for free, or if I’m really anxious, I’ll pay for a day pass for $.99 online. Other than that, I search out local news elsewhere.
I’ll read the the news online if it’s free. I’ll also watch the news TV if it’s free. I read this blog but will only be doing so as long as it’s free. I’ll also listen to the radio if it’s free.
I’m unwilling to pay for things like random News and random Pop Music on the radio because they passively stream by me like a river.
If I need to pay for some type of media or entertainment then it wont be access to random articles or random music.
If I’m going to spend money on media I’ll shop around and purchase carefully selected items.
On the other hand… I’ll subscribe to something like NetFlix where there is a an almost endless list of specific items that I would be happy to pay for on an individual basis… But I’ll only subscribe to a service like that if purchasing the items individually exceeds the cost of the subscription.
Hi Ian. I pay only $15 per year for the same product local people who are in Hawai’i pay more. They are closer and I am on the other side of the continent. The price structure is illogical. I love my digital subscription….