I began subscribing to The Star soon after arriving in Kansas City in September 1969. This morning, I canceled my print subscription.
I did so with determination and without regret. It was time.
I’ve been urging readers and friends who still take the print edition to drop it and just take the digital edition, which runs a reasonable $12.99 a month. And today I followed my own advice…I will continue receiving The New York Times print edition daily, except Saturday, of course, when The Star doesn’t publish a print edition.
Here are the three reasons I decided to cancel, after consulting with Patty.
1) The print product is not timely and not very good.
2) Ownership of The Star and the other McClatchy papers will soon transfer to a New Jersey-based hedge fund, and I don’t want to give a hedge fund any more money than absolutely necessary.
3) The customer service people at The Star, or maybe McClatchy, played a dirty trick on me: They raised my print subscription rate from $22.80 a month to $54.80 without notice.
A few more details on each factor…
Print product deterioration
For me, Sunday was the clincher. The Sunday paper — which has the widest readership and should get the most attention from editors — had three stories about the same incident, the Friday night police protests in Overland Park. The stories appeared on pages 6, 7 and 8. Instead of someone combining the three stories into one coherent one, somebody decided to back up the truck and dump all three in the paper and let the readers sort through the mess.
At the top of page 2 was a story about three people being killed and six injured “in overnight car crashes.” Overnight, however, referred to Friday night/Saturday morning — not Saturday night — meaning one of the crashes occurred a day and a half earlier. The Star has moved its print-edition deadline up so far it’s nearly impossible to get any late-afternoon/evening news in the next morning’s paper.
Along the same lines, Sam Mellinger’s column about the Royals’ Friday opening game was on the front page of the sports section. That was another 36-hour-old story.
(Coincidentally, reader and media relations professional Bob Hallinan sent me an email this morning about the lack of coverage of Saturday’s game, which ended early Saturday evening, in the Sunday paper. He wrote: “I was looking forward to reading all of the highlights and sidebar stories over my Sunday morning coffee. Imagine my surprise when there was no mention of the Saturday game…(I)f f they’re not going to make even a token effort to include anything from Saturday, usually a big sports day, in the Sunday print edition, what’s the point of getting the print edition?”)
Change of ownership
As many of you know, McClatchy filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy early this year, and the company is about to go from being publicly traded to privately owned. The winning bidder for McClatchy was Chatham Asset Management, McClatchy’s largest shareholder and creditor. Chatham is so shadowy it doesn’t have a website, and I could not find a photo of its managing partner, Anthony Melchiorre, on the internet. Hedge funds have taken control of other newspaper chains too; the attraction is the still-relatively-high cash volume that newspaper companies bring in. For the most part, the hedge funds drain the cash and invest it elsewhere at a higher rate of return.
A tradition in the newspaper business is that whenever there’s a change of ownership, the president or C.E.O. of the takeover company goes around to each paper, meets with editorial staff members and announces what he/she has in mind for future operations. Star staffers will be waiting a long time, I bet, for Anthony Melchiorre to present himself in the newsroom at 1601 McGee.
Subscription rate
I’ve heard horror stories from friends and readers about subscription rates, and now I’ve got a story of my own.
Until last November, I had been getting a special Star retiree rate of $10.96 per month — in addition to the $12.99 a month for the digital subscription.
If the print rate had stayed at that — that is, if The Star had stood by its commitment to me as a retiree with 36 years of service — I would still be taking the print edition. In December, it went up to $22.80 a month. I don’t recall complaining; I think I just thought it was still a pretty good deal.
In May, I got an email from customer service saying my rate would be going up to $54.17 a month. I wrote back and noted I was a retiree and had been promised a much lower rate. A rep wrote back agreeing to continue the $22.80 rate, and I thanked him for the accommodation.
The $22.80 has been automatically charged to my credit card, and I hadn’t checked it recently…until Sunday, when Patty and I talked about dropping the print subscription.
Imagine my surprise — to quote Bob Hallinan — when I saw that in June I had been charged $54.80 for the print edition. I checked my Mastercard charges online for July and saw, sure enough, that the new charge had been assessed on July 12.
That solidified my decision.
When I called a customer service rep today, she offered — after much discussion and stroking of me as “a longtime, valued customer” — to return me to the $22.80 rate.
But my mind was made up. “You might as well stop talking,” I said, “because I’m canceling.”
So, starting Aug. 10, I will no longer be a print subscriber. The Star will just have to muddle along without my $22.80 (or $54.80) a month. Even if Anthony Melchiorre calls me personally, I’m washing my hands of the print edition.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Jim, I stopped the print edition over 5 years ago. I was usually reading some stories with the free on-line edition, but then they stopped that. I do not see it is worth $13/25 or whatever the digital pay rate is. But I do miss the obituaries and local news. I just rely on the Channel 5 app for local news. It is really sad how the paper was run into the ground.
I don’t disagree with your reasoning, Bill, but since you once worked for the paper, I think you realize TV news doesn’t do nearly as good a job as The Star on local news, even in its diminished state.
There’s a ton of junk on The Star’s website, and stories are frequently overplayed. But almost every day there’s a must-read story. And I still look to the editorial page for guidance on local and state government issues.
Sure, Jim, I understand your position. You are right. I do miss the local reporting They do not cover local government and politics like the Star does/did. A friend will sometimes send me an article or obituary that he may think I may find interesting. It’s a changed world. A good part of it is our digital world, but with the buyouts, customer service became worse and worse. So I agree I am not going to pay the hedge fund any of my money!
I had cancelled my subscription last Fall due to all kinds of issues with delivery. They seemed to fix those, so I decided to stay with them, but then got fed up due to the cost and cancelled anyway. I then waited the requisite amount of time (maybe 30 days?) to requalify as a new subscriber, and subscribed through Discountednewspapers.com. I was able to get a full 52-week subscription, print and digital, for $260 including all service fees! I just looked at their website, and they are offering a 26-week subscription for $139, including service charges. Groupon has a digital-only offer for new subscribers for $40 for the first full year. All of these are based on being willing to skip the paper (or share someone else’s subscription) for a period of time.
$54 and change is cheap. I had 2 subscriptions, one for myself, one for an elderly relative. Rate went to $102 and $103 per 4 weeks, up from something like $48 per 4 weeks. Cancelled, told them I would keep the digital sub, believe I was charged $20 for 6 months. I started subscribing to The Star as a student at the U of Mo., back in the late 60’s.
Debra and I are having the same discussion as the NYT and LA times are next to me on the couch. I find I’ve read most everything by the time the print edition arrives. I read the Star website which is good enough since timeliness is not an issue for me.
Being a child of “ink” {Dad worked for the Post Dispatch for 36 years in production – paper handler) after he retired he once said he wouldn’t wrap dead fish in the Post for fear of pissing off the fish, That being said I switched to the on-line Post five years ago. Since I now live on a major street with a lot of foot traffic near a bus stop a thrown paper would disappear before I got to it. I still buy a Sunday paper just to get the more in depth stories. The nice thing is no ads to deal with, the down side is that I don’t think they could afford spell check.
I, too, have experienced the same frustrations you guys have since moving up here to Worcester, MA. I have been a physical daily newspaper reader for at least the past 50 years (40 of them in KC) but no more. Had too many delivery issues with the Worcester Telegram-Gazette. Even got to the point where the PUBLISHER of the paper actually delivered one to me one morning. Still cancelled. Didn’t want the aggrevation. Now read the local paper, along with the STAR and the NY TIMES onine.
I can’t believe it. I’m shocked. I always thought, if you could hang on, I should, too. After much contemplating I just renewed Wed. and Sun. only, for a next-to-nothing rate. Also, inexplicably, I received a subscription refund check from McClatchey in the mail today for $1.66.
Your horror story about the rate increase is precisely why I NEVER do automatic payment.
Very smart, Gayle…And to your first point, I vaguely recall saying on this blog some years ago that I would always take the print edition. But things change. That was before the hedge funds moved in, before subscription rates became a shell game and before the morning newspaper no longer contained much of yesterday’s news. Time to move on…
Ditto from me, except that they wanted $100/mo from me. It is such a poor product compared to even other struggling daily print papers.
I can’t get my WSJ Saturday edition on Saturday either. Carrier bundles it with my Sunday NYT.
That’s good service, Bill, your carrier delivering the weekend WSJ on Sunday. I think most people who take NYT — like me — simply don’t get the Saturday print edition.
In a 60 game season, each game played is just that much more important than a game played during a 162 game season, so The Star has no excuse for not getting something in the next day’s paper about a game played the previous afternoon. Take the time machine back to five and six years ago and me and my buddy were waiting long hours at The Star’s delivery center in Lenexa for the papers to come in so we could deliver them to my buddy’s customers because The Star had been waiting for the Royals playoff game of the day to end and then get the story in the next day’s paper. It’s a good thing Kennedy got shot on a Friday in November 1963 because if he were to get shot on a Friday in November this year, a reader wouldn’t be able to read about it until (remember, there’s no Saturday paper anymore) that Sunday. Dad said when the news from Dallas came in that fateful day over the teletype machine, the first editions of the Friday evening paper were already coming off the press at 18th and Grand and within 15 minutes or so after the confirmation of JFK’s passing, they had the front page changed out and the press was rolling again with the biggest story of the year/decade/half century. How do these clowns at the hedge fund propose to cover the next big mega event? “North Korean rocket nails LA.” Read about it on our Twitter feed. We’ll be out with a print story whenever we get around to it. Give me a break!!! Say it ain’t so, Joe … oops, Jim, but I guess it is what it is. Shrinking ad revenue. A decline in the number of serious readers who are out there. Poor customer service. The perfect storm, as they say. I have to want to read something really, really bad before I will get on The Star’s website to try to find it there. My favorite thing on the website, if it’s even still there, is the link that plays “The Kansas City Star March.” I even wrote some words to go with the piece once.
I had many of the same frustration with attempts at huge rate increases. Luckily, they were kind enough to send a notice ahead of time. First time when I called, they convinced me to continue at the old rate. Then same thing a couple of months later and I could see the writing on the wall. I called and cancelled. They tried to even drop lower (but only temporarily). I stood my ground knowing if not, it would just keep happening every few months.
The other thing thta frustrated me was that I might see a feature story online 3 or 4 days before it was in the print edition. If I said anything to my dad who doesn’t go online, he’d say he hadn’t seen it. So by the time we got in in our print edition, I’d already read it.
And sports is frustrating too. Better game stories online and inexcusable for a game that ends at 7:30 pm to have no mention in the next day’s print edition. As Mark Mangino said, “it’s all about the dollar signs.” Gues we should be grateful they got the Super Bowl results and stories in last February!
We had a mock headline banner printed and hanging on the wall of the weekly where I started out. “Dewey Captures Manila, Defeats Truman,” with a sub-head of “Get it late, get it wrong.”