Sunday, June 15, 2008

Newspaper subscription reflections

....try to say that ten times fast - that's way worse than both "action Jackson" and "She sells seashells by the seashore". It probably leaves something to be desired in terms of it's qualities as a header as well, but I'm not even gonna pretend that I care.

While I really enjoy reading newspapers on weekends, there's just no way there's enough time or interest to justify a full-time subscription. Because of this, we've had several approaches to gettin' our newspaper fix since we moved to this region. Our first strategy was to scour the newspaper stands when we went out shopping every Saturday. That strategy offered a certain flexibility, as we were free to purchase whichever newspaper managed to catch our interest that day, but left us hanging with respect to cost and the fact that by the time we got to the register, the selection might leave something to be desired unless we shopped early, which didn't really happen a lot back then.

Strategy B went along the lines of "Hey; let's give the local newspaper a chance and get a weekend subscription to Adressa." Big mistake. At first, we had a reliable delivery guy, but after a change of personnel, we pretty much didn't get our Saturday issue at all, and there was lots of hassle with having to call and complain etc. Moreover, there's just no getting around the fact that Adresseavisen is a prime example of abysmal journalism, and I can't really think of any reason for the newspapers not self-combusting in shame that doesn't involve dousing the paper issues with some form of flame-retardant. So; paper didn't get delivered AND paper sucks lightly peppered monkey balls is a potent combo of reasons not to sink any money into that enterprise.

Our present situation is a weekend subscription to Dagens Næringsliv, which is certainly a step up. The news coverage is in my opinion very good - they can spell and string sentences together - and they come at news stories from different angles, in that they let various prominent politicians etc. from different political and economical positions write commentaries regarding various hot topics. So far so good. And when their Friday magazine is on, it's on. However; too big a fraction of the newspaper is concerned with how the stock market is doing and pure business, so that what's immediately interesting to me is in the minority. Not exactly a surprise that Dagens Næringsliv is heavy on the finance stuff, but after a while there's too much of the paper I'm just skimming through, and so it seems - for lack of a better term - wasteful. Besides, I've yet to read a single issue of Dagens Næringsliv which doesn't feature a photo of John Fredriksen, and dude is kind of hard on the eyes. In other words, it's time to move on.

Anyone have suggestions for well-written papers which offer weekend subscriptions? Aftenposten and Bergens Tidende are frontrunners as of right now.

8 comments:

Anders said...

....try to say that ten times fast - that's way worse than both "action Jackson

:-D

Anyone have suggestions for well-written papers which offer weekend subscriptions?

Have you given Søndag, Søndag a try? It's Sunday only, but it's well-written and should cover most of the areas you find interesting.
;-)

Aftenposten and Bergens Tidende are frontrunners as of right now.

Long time since I gave up on Bergens Tidende, both on content, but not at least on delivery. Aftenpost might be OK, but it's WAY too many ads in there. I feel that Dagens Næringslive is the best bet out there, but agree with the weak points you mentioned.

Wilhelm said...

Long time since I gave up on Bergens Tidende, both on content, but not at least on delivery.

Really? Damn. I seem to remember that it was a good paper back when I lived there - is this recent, or was I always deluded?

Anders said...

Really? Damn. I seem to remember that it was a good paper back when I lived there - is this recent, or was I always deluded?

The content started fading when I subscribed, yes. Less and less of the in-depth articles were written by the papers own journalists, most of them where translated from foreign papers. Still beats BA by a mile, though.

Wilhelm said...

Dude; you don't have to tell me that BA sucks - I can totally verify that, remembah?

Anders said...

Ah, how could I forget. Silly me.
:-D

Unknown said...

le monde

Wilhelm said...

...so this backfired on me...should've seen that coming, or at least provided better boundary conditions for the newspaper selection

Anders said...

le monde

LOL
Good one, pigeon. :-D