I have a major decision to make in the next few days, and it's really bumming me out.

Any day now, the Hartford Courant will realize that I have *not* renewed my subscription, and will stop delivering the paper.  If I want to continue receiving the paper, I need to go over to the website and bring my account up to date.  

If you are like pretty much all of my friends, you've never gotten into the habit of reading a newspaper.  You get most of your news from either tv or the internet.  I can pretty much point to exactly why that happened.  When I was a freshman at college, there was no "special rate" for college students.  So the choice was to pony up full price for whatever newspaper you chose, or to go without.  Given that you could get an extra beer for that money, pretty much 99% of the students went without a paper.  I, on the other hand, having grown up in a utopian household where we got THREE papers daily, would buy at least one, if not two papers daily, and mooch as many others as I could find.  I'd scrape my coins together every morning and start the day off with a paper and my coffee.  I was definitely the exception to the rule.

When we got out of college, home delivery actually cost more in NYC than going to the newsstand and grabbing a copy.  So even more of my friends gave up the habit, as it became too cumbersome to swing by the newsstand each morning.  I developed an internal map of favorite newsstands, and routinely knew how to find my favorite paper at the time--NY Newsday--which was not always an easy task.  You see, the Times, Post & Daily News were all readily available, but fewer newsstands carried Newsday.  I liked it b/c it had the most comics and the most even toned reporting.  None of the "smug" of the Times, and none of the hysterical screaming of the Daily News or the Post.  (I should note that I have ALWAYS boycotted the NY TImes for their ridiculous ban on comic strips)  At some point, Newsday returned to it's more regional Long Island roots, and I had to shift to a dual combination of the Daily News & the Post.  I tolerated it b/c between the two, I got almost 5 pages of comic strips, with very few overlaps.

Moving back to CT was a relief because I was able to subscribe to the Courant, which had long been a favorite paper of mine.  Since 2002, I have woken up each morning to a cup of coffee and my beloved paper.  One of the proudest days of my life was when Per started asking for the comic pages on Sundays so that he could read them himself.  So, you may ask yourself why I didn't rush to renew when I recently got the notice.

The problem is, as with all newspapers, the Hartford Courant is in dire circumstances.  Over the past 7 years, I've seen most of my favorite columnists axed and the paper dumbed down to where half the stories are AP stories that I've already read online.  They spend money and effort on graphic redesigns to mask the fact that most of the indepth reporting is no longer there.  It seems as though no one in charge at the Courant understands the vital truth.  I don't read the paper for little factoid paragraphs that I can read on the front page of CNN.com.  I read for interesting local articles about people and places here in my neighborhood and surrounding communities that I wouldn't otherwise hear about.  I read for indepth examinations of the politics here at a state level and for local takes on world events.  I read for coverage of local teams like the CT Sun, and for the high schools where my friends kids go.  It's a little bit of a chicken/egg situation.  The paper claims that they're forced into the staffing cuts by decreasing revenues, yet the cuts they've made make the paper that much less interesting for subscribers in an internet age. 

So here I sit with a dillemma before me.  Do I plunk down the chunk of money to continue my subscription?  Or have we finally gotten to a point where I'm just wasting my money for the privilege of reading my comics and news in the living room each morning?  I think only those with similar newspaper habits will understand the pain I have contemplating this choice, and why I continue to agonize over my decision.  I literally keep going back and forth over it--I know I love to have my paper in the morning, but do I really get anything of value for my money?