Still the daily Free Press?
11/29/08
[donation]
By Joel Thurtell
Maybe the Free Press won’t go two days a week print and all-the-time Web, as I suggested in my last column.
That article reproduced an Internet site called freepressoffer.com with the password PM. Go on the site and you’ll see an offer for people to subscribe to the Free Press Sundays and Thursdays with a subscription online to the other five days of the paper.
On the other hand, who knows?
Seemed pretty logical to assume that site signaled that the Freep was planning to reduce its print publication to twice-a-week. After all, there have been rumors about a reduced publication schedule since early last summer.
But maybe not.
Writes star Free Press reporter M.L. Elrick: “Joel, we’ve been told that the new plan does not eliminate daily publication of the paper. Have you considered that this offer is geared to readers who want the papers that come with all the inserts without the other 5 days’ worth of papers?”
No, Mike, that had not occurred to me.
But it seems like a possibility.
On the other hand, we heard managers say they weren’t dumping the Community Free Press, didn’t we? The denial followed a report on JOTR that the CFP was on death row.
And we know what happened months after the denial — anybody seen the CFP lately?
Have to wait and see, I guess.
But I have to admit two things.
First, despite my criticisms of the Free Press, I rely on it to give me regional and state news. It is, despite all the downsizing, the buyouts (of whom I am one) and the rumors of bad things to come, still a pretty doggone good newspaper.
Second, I hate reading newspapers online.
So, I hope Mike Elrick is right.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
IF the freep does the online subscription deal, I’m gone after 30 years subscribing to the paper. I’ll buy the Sunday paper when I’m so inclined and get my news from other sites. Most of the Freep since Gannett bought them is rehashed wire service anyway.