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Last year the L.A. Times was offering a 3-month subscription for free, so I signed up. I wanted to support “independent journalism” so I let it keep renewing un

Last year the L.A. Times was offering a 3-month subscription for free, so I signed up. I wanted to support “independent journalism” so I let it keep renewing until last week — honestly, though, I just forgot to cancel it in February. Anyway, I finally cancelled my digital sub this week. If you live outside of L.A., this paper has no actual value to your news intake for the day. IMO it seems their entire focus is California and that’s it — yes.. it is the “LA TIMES” but they have many different sections. For example, if you visit ~/Science/Medicine, you’ll see they went almost an entire month without one post on this topic — June 26th to July 15th. Do you want to see what’s happening around the world? ~/World section was recently stripped of all subsections — Mexico, Middle East — and instead all posts fall under the general umbrella on the main page. Not to mention, a lot of their articles are borderline tabloid-TMZesque. Do you want to read about Heidi Klum’s Bel-Air home she recently put on the market? The business section is prime reading for you. In all reality, once the L.A. Times’ formed their guild, many writers found employment elsewhere, and those that have stayed are constantly bailing water out of their sinking ship.

sieabahlpark 7y ago
They're called the la slimes for a reason
untog 7y ago
> once the L.A. Times’ formed their guild, many writers found employment elsewhere ...eh? Which LA Times writers quit because the newsroom unionized?
kbenson 7y ago
> If you live outside of L.A., this paper has no actual value to your news intake for the day. IMO it seems their entire focus is California and that’s it — yes.. it is the “LA TIMES” but they have many different sections. I'm not sure I can fault them much for this. I imagine most that care for national news care enough to get it from some more well known agency, like WaPo, NYT, etc. You can either try to compete with the likes of them, or focus on what they can't easily provide, which is more local news. This is just what the Internet does, consolidate services into the few players that do it best. It would be interesting if their were bundled subscriptions for local papers. If there was an integrated offering such that you could buy NYT or WaPo with LA Times, or SF Chronicle, or whatever your local paper was tacked on for a moderate fee, I imagine a lot of people would opt for that. Enough that it might be beneficial for both agencies. NYT and WaPo definitely have the online resources and talent to do something like that, and if they did it well, they could offer a platform for newspapers to use for publishing that allowed enough branding that they could probably make quite a bit of money while making it trivial to combine articles between sources very smoothly.
- projectileboy 7y ago
  I very much agree. There’s no real reason for the second tier city newspapers to do much beyond local - that’s actually what I want them to do. When I want national or world news, I look at a short list (NYT, WSJ, Economist, maybe WaPo) that other newspapers just are not going to be able to compete with. But what’s going on in my neighborhood? St Paul Pioneer Press has it covered.
blueboo 7y ago
> In all reality, once the L.A. Times’ formed their guild, many writers found employment elsewhere, and those that have stayed are constantly bailing water out of their sinking ship. Check your notes, folks. There were layoffs at the behest of good ol' Tronc (the famously mismanaged Chicago Tribune conglomerate) but it appears that very few writers left the LAT of their own volition after unionization -- on the order of 1. (https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/la-times-cuts-layoffs.php https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/la-times-cuts-layoffs.p...)
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
alphaomegacode 7y ago
Wow, it's strange that I could've written this same post. Similar reasons for subscribing digitally and the same lack of other stories I would find interesting. I'm sure it's great for LA but a lesson learned - subscribe digitally to national or local. Cannot fault the LA Times for their focus but there is a real concern with the way they do business when it comes to these digital subscriptions. You can sign up easily enough yet when you want to cancel, you have to call in and spend 10 minutes on the phone. Plus, you're given multiple sales pitches for lower-priced offerings when cancelling. This type of dark pattern for a well-known newspaper could itself be a tech news story. What could be worrisome is this kind of difficult cancellation process will put people off from supporting other news organizations via subscription.

sieabahlpark 7y ago

They're called the la slimes for a reason

untog 7y ago

> once the L.A. Times’ formed their guild, many writers found employment elsewhere ...eh? Which LA Times writers quit because the newsroom unionized?

kbenson 7y ago

> If you live outside of L.A., this paper has no actual value to your news intake for the day. IMO it seems their entire focus is California and that’s it — yes.. it is the “LA TIMES” but they have many different sections. I'm not sure I can fault them much for this. I imagine most that care for national news care enough to get it from some more well known agency, like WaPo, NYT, etc. You can either try to compete with the likes of them, or focus on what they can't easily provide, which is more local news. This is just what the Internet does, consolidate services into the few players that do it best. It would be interesting if their were bundled subscriptions for local papers. If there was an integrated offering such that you could buy NYT or WaPo with LA Times, or SF Chronicle, or whatever your local paper was tacked on for a moderate fee, I imagine a lot of people would opt for that. Enough that it might be beneficial for both agencies. NYT and WaPo definitely have the online resources and talent to do something like that, and if they did it well, they could offer a platform for newspapers to use for publishing that allowed enough branding that they could probably make quite a bit of money while making it trivial to combine articles between sources very smoothly.

projectileboy 7y ago
I very much agree. There’s no real reason for the second tier city newspapers to do much beyond local - that’s actually what I want them to do. When I want national or world news, I look at a short list (NYT, WSJ, Economist, maybe WaPo) that other newspapers just are not going to be able to compete with. But what’s going on in my neighborhood? St Paul Pioneer Press has it covered.

blueboo 7y ago

> In all reality, once the L.A. Times’ formed their guild, many writers found employment elsewhere, and those that have stayed are constantly bailing water out of their sinking ship. Check your notes, folks. There were layoffs at the behest of good ol' Tronc (the famously mismanaged Chicago Tribune conglomerate) but it appears that very few writers left the LAT of their own volition after unionization -- on the order of 1. (https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/la-times-cuts-layoffs.php https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/la-times-cuts-layoffs.p...)

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

alphaomegacode 7y ago

Wow, it's strange that I could've written this same post. Similar reasons for subscribing digitally and the same lack of other stories I would find interesting. I'm sure it's great for LA but a lesson learned - subscribe digitally to national or local. Cannot fault the LA Times for their focus but there is a real concern with the way they do business when it comes to these digital subscriptions. You can sign up easily enough yet when you want to cancel, you have to call in and spend 10 minutes on the phone. Plus, you're given multiple sales pitches for lower-priced offerings when cancelling. This type of dark pattern for a well-known newspaper could itself be a tech news story. What could be worrisome is this kind of difficult cancellation process will put people off from supporting other news organizations via subscription.