Click if You Love Your Newspaper

Struggling here to keep some sort of connection with the goings-on at the homefront, whilst I indulge in the guilty pleasure that is my time in Peru, (which also has one of the most robust economies in South America, in no small part because they have very tight constraints on mortgage procedures), I find myself pondering the uncertain future of yet another major newspaper in San Francisco.

What is the alternative to newspapers?  TV News? No thanks.  And I must confess no great love for citizen bloggers as a source of current events either. I see them more as op-ed pages, and I am sure there are notable exceptions, for the most part I am not interested in asking them for their opinion.  I am one of those curmudgeons that values experience and team playing when it comes to news gathering.  It is not a perfect system – but, um, what is?

And so verklempt,  I ponder how I can help, aside from subscribing (which I already do too many magazines and two dailies), to make newspapers viable.  I would gladly pay a nominal fee to subscribe to content online for a year.  Somewhere between $25-50 seems reasonable to me, or for specific content, I would happily pay a $.25-.50 download fee.  Since no one is asking me to do this, except for the venerable Wall Street Journal to which I already subscribe (and really prefer reading the object versus the screen, sorry Kindle) I have decided to make the conscious effort to click on those paid advertisements in hopes that it will support the newspapers that I so adore.  When you click on those google ads I know it benefits the site, so I hope that the same holds for the other paid ads. And so I say, Click if You Love Your Content, and try to help your newspaper help you.