Since the big city papers pulled out of the area, I tried to get the local Saturday papers to at least get the high school football results. Since neither paper available could get the results in, I thought I would go on Tuesday morning when both papers would print their next edition. This would have worked out great since my weekend begins at 7am Tuesday morning.
Unfortunately since my last visit two Saturdays earlier, the convenience store that had the breakfast sandwiches I like sold out to a competitor. The new chain does not sell newspapers. They also don’t make very good breakfast sandwiches either
As margins were cut to the stores, more of them were finding the papers more trouble than they are worth even as loss leaders to get people to buy things like sandwiches and coffee. When I worked for a paper in the early 80s, the store got 16% on our daily and 20% on our Sunday paper and we took back the unsold papers. In the early 2000s the USA Today gave stores 11%. When the Wichita Eagle and Kansas City Star raised the price of their Sunday paper from $1.50 to $2.00, they not only kept the entire price increase they took five cents from the fifteen cents the stores were making previously. Dropping the margin from 10% to 6% was the last straw for some of the stores.
I went to the only store in town that sold newspapers and found that the Reporter had not arrived by 8am. I bought a jelly doughnut and the Sun and left.
Footyfried 