For most of my life I have had a newspaper delivered to me each day. I have always enjoyed sitting down and reading the newspaper.

It has been nice to make my way out to the driveway in the morning and pick up the paper.

However, this is coming to an end soon. I am paid up through the end of October, but then I will stop having the newspaper delivered.

The reason is that it has increased in price so much in the last two years that it is no longer worth the cost of having it delivered.

This is mainly because of changes in employment law, and also a new California Transportation Fee. I have been contemplating stopping my subscription for some time now, but a information post card that was in my mailbox last week was the final straw. It informed me that as part of my subscription charge that 35 cents a day goes toward the fee. You can do the math and see how large a fee I am paying yearly.

The increased subscription for delivery also comes because the delivery drivers are no long contractors, but now must be employees and be paid minimum wage, benefits, etc.. This has all increased the costs of delivery and with the decreased number of people who get home delivery the cost per person has been rising.

I will no longer have to worry about the newspaper ending up in the gutter

or in one of my rosebushes to be found months later.

My rubber band ball will stop growing as fast, but it is almost too big anyway.

In the past two months the paper has not been delivered consistently. Several times delivery has been missed and two papers were delivered the next day.

The value of the news in the paper has also dropped and this has also contributed to the decision. In the past year there is less local news, and more general national news as the paper was purchased by a large conglomerate.

For quite some times all event times for sports were in EST instead of being converted to local time. Most columns are now written by syndicated columnists who do not reflect the character of the readers.

Also, in the sports section any event that ends late in the evening on the West Coast is not covered in the paper the next day. I was used to this when I lived in the Midwest, and it is only recently that this is happening in the paper here.

I almost feel like the only page worth something is the comics page.

I believe the age of home delivery of daily newspapers is rapidly drawing to a close.

Steven