Comments on Why Do I Subscribe to the Seattle Times and the Seattle PI?

Excusable: reprinting from the NYT a day later. Few people in Seattle read the New York Times.

Not excusable: running in both the P-I and the Times.

The only reason to get a print version of either paper is if you like to do the crossword puzzle (also from the NY Times, but at least current).

People still read paper papers?

Yeah, it's a shame there are no columnists in Seattle whose pieces they could run...

Fnarf @1, I think you're half right.  Just as "few people in Seattle read the New York Times," few people read both The Seattle Times and the P-I.

Why does this even warrant mention?

Subscribing to the NYT makes the local paper irrelevant, except for:

1. Local Mayhem
2. Estate Sale classifieds
3. Sonics boo-hoo

I've cut back to teh PI on Fri-Sat-Sun, but even that feels increasingly pointless.

Man, this is just inexcusable ... next thing you know, SLOG will start posting multiple SLOG threads on the exact same story from different staffers ... and then where will we be?

Newspapers are sexy. It's adorable to see a grown man reading his paper in the morning with his coffee. If he's hot, that is.

Dan you're averaging a slog post every 15 minutes this morning.

I don't know what I'd do without my coffee and paper in the morning. Sorta gets the whole day started off right. But no NYT, sadly - it's just too easy to go there online anymore. Back in the olden days when my hair was still brown, though, yeah, I spent the money on the Times.

@6 - Don't forget that all Sports coverage in East Coast papers is shit due to late games on the West Coast missing the deadline.

don't forget how east coast sports journalists are homers for notre dame.

But Dan, if you stop reading the Times and PI where will you get all the background info and links for your morning news roundup?

It'd be a shame if the Stranger had to pay a staff of reporters to go get that info on its own.

True, Jeff! Except... none of the links in this morning's MN are from the Times or PI.

And I subscribe to three daily papers because I like reading them, and want them to live, dammit, live! But reading the same op-ed in all three of 'em is annoying and unnecessary. But, hey, at least the Seattle Times put in a little extra effort and wrote their very own headline for the Krugman column.

And thank you for playing Slog.

Both papers need to dump their editorial pages. Edit/Op-ed pages only piss people off. I'd keep a letters to the editor page because it's always interesting to see what kind of whackjobs live in this town (EXHIBIT A: The Slog) but the finger-wagging "editorial boards" on both papers have to go. No one cares what the overpaid suits think - sorry D! - and the money would be better spent on hiring more reporters to cover local issues.

There is one thing the PI and the Times bring ... comics.

Seriously, that two page hit of very small comics makes a world of difference.

At least it's not like the America-hating editorial opinions in the WSJ and Washington Post ...

And I like Miss Manners on Tuesday in the Times, and Caroline Hax in the PI. And my boyfriend likes the sports coverage in the PI.

@8 I totally agree with you Mr. Poe. A man reading the Internet first thing in the morning doesn't have quite the same appeal...

I no longer subscribe to the papers. Why bother when I can get quality news online?

I thought the Staying In/Going Out pages in the P-I (now combined onto one page) were the best addition to either print paper in quite some time.

It seems like there should be room in the market for a daily that focuses on local and regional news. The Stranger does a good job covering those issues as a weekly, but also has a much narrower demographic appeal.

The dailies need to ditch the national and international news (that's what the New York Times is for) and the nationally syndicated columnists and cartoonists, which are easy enough to get from the source. I get Krugman's column and his blog via RSS to my blog reader and along with my other feeds it's two clicks away from any open browser window. The same goes for my favorite comics (only one, Doonesbury, which is likely to be in a local newspaper anyway).

Then add local news coverage. They've got the murder and business angle pretty much covered, but just about every other local and regional topic gets anemic coverage.

This might not be as profitable at first, but in the long run it's the only way the dailies are going to survive.

I wish we could buy a Local News and Comics only version of both the PI and the Suburban Times.

Why DO you buy these newspapers? If you want to read a bunch of sentence fragments, you can read them onine for free.

Because they have spellczech at the PI and Times, Catman.

I have to disagree with you on this one Dan.

Is Savage Love printed (or posted online) on the same day in all of the papers it is syndicated in? Is it some sort of crime for readers of the various alt-weeklies to get their Savage Love on different days, even if they could have read it earlier online somewhere else?

If you subscribe to multiple papers, you are going to get redundant articles, be they from syndicated columnists, or the newswires (AP, Reuters, etc). Duh. Unless of course you want to do away with syndicated columnists and newswire reporting.

"Savage Love" doesn't run in more than one paper in one city—and then there's the whole JOA thing to consider. We have two dao;u papers operating here under an exception to racketeering laws—or prostitution laws, or something—so that readers aren't denied a multiplicity of viewpoints. A conservative paper (Seattle Times), basically, and a liberal paper (the PI, on life support). But if the papers run the same wire-service content, and the same columns on the same day, why have two?

But, yes, enterprising readers can go online and find the column on different websites on the same day, it's true.

Um, Dan, they've been doing this for weeks if not months. It's the relationship the ST negotiated with NYT for the opinion columnists - ST prints them the day after NYT. Maureen Dowd, Krugman, you name it.

I know, Seattle Mike. It's jarring, though, to see both our dailies reprint the same column on the same day.