Bellingham Herald

Call me old-fashioned (or worse) but I have trouble starting my day without a newspaper. It's not so much for the actual NEWS-- most of that has already been published electronically-- rather I guess I just like the PAPER part of it. Coffee just doesn't taste the same absent the smell of ink and pulp.

But not for $3.14 per day.

Unless I'm reading this statement wrong, that's what McClatchy thinks I'll pay for the privilege of proofreading the Herald. I've said it before, that publishing a daily newspaper looks harder every day in our realtime information culture. Dailies are folding at a startling rate and it's impossible to build an argument disputing the trend. The morning paper has lost its relevance and will soon be something only your parents remember with melancholy-- like ashtrays or rotary phones.

But it's still a drag.

I have to eyeball my computer enough for my job; I don't want to do any more recreational screening than I have to (he said on Facebook). But every minute I have to spend reading Gallagher or the local obituaries on-line is one more minute spent sitting on my ass at my desk or slumping into my phone. And neither of those things go well with breakfast.

But I can't continue to justify a thousand bucks a year for what the Herald has become. Sometimes I think maybe I'm the last subscriber-- that they're just hiking my rate up to get me to not renew so they can stop printing one copy a day and driving it to my house, flinging it onto my parking strip on the way to their real job.

It used to arrive on the porch.

The Cascadia News is great, but only weekly in 3 dimensions. The Seattle Times is a real newspaper, but I can get that news elsewhere. It's the local stuff I'll miss. Still, I just don't think I can afford it anymore. So long, Herry. You've been grand…