If it was a morning paper from local stops, showing what type of towns you're going through, THAT would be real nice.I always enjoyed getting a morning paper and in fact will occasionally buy one if a station has a coin operated paper box. Towards the end, more and more places opted for giving copies of USA Today instead of local papers, which I don't really care for. In today's world where much of the news (seemingly) is bad, it was refreshing to read about things that weren't bad, especially in the smaller places. The morning paper from Klamath Falls, especially, was like that. I enjoyed reading about Mrs. Calabash winning the blue ribbon for her prize chrysanthemums at the local fair, or the Klamath Falls Dodgers winning the American Legion baseball championship. Or in the police blotter, instead of robberies, murders, and riots, reading about police being dispatched to 1313 Mockingbird Lane on a report of dogs tipping over garbage cans. THAT'S the kind of news I like seeing.
Well, not so much when they put on USA Today, but I loved getting the little local papers like at Minot.Who needs a paper when much more current news is available online? And when there's no cell phone service, and therefore, no onboard wifi, simply wait until the train gets near a city with population over 100 and there will be cell phone service for a few minutes.
The Buffalo News is a great paper still and I think it's because it's locally owned and committed to its local regional region (WNY) in a way conglomerate owned papers just aren't. It's a far better paper than the Oregonian has been in recent years, and if you compare the economic health of the two regions that shouldn't be so. I would love to get local papers when I finally take my Victory Lap of America to celebrate my retirement.
It would have the potential for literally buying good will, but also for alienating people along the route depending on what papers get bought and how that decision is made.Well, ownership makes a huge difference in the relative quality of newspapers and always has. But in the environment of the past decade, I have seen even some great papers, whose owners were really committed to local journalism, wind up in dire straits.
In terms of Amtrak, I would love to see daily newspapers offered onboard again to premium customers. And I'm guessing the demographic that rides in sleeping cars would have a pretty good overlap with the demographic that still reads newspapers. But there are no doubt some people who wouldn't see the value in it or would even see it as wasteful.
It would have the potential for literally buying good will, but also for alienating people along the route depending on what papers get bought and how that decision is made.
I guess it’s an ‘old’ thing but after our recent move we subscribed to the local newspaper and are thoroughly enjoying reading it with our morning coffee. Much more informative and interesting than wasting time watching inane morning ‘news’ shows. We find we missed so much with the on line papers that you don’t when it’s so easy to scan a full print page rather than endless scrolling on a tiny screen.
I think the last local paper that I received as a sleeping car passenger on Amtrak was the Pueblo Chieftain (if I have the name correct) which I think was put on the westbound Chief at La Junta. I am guessing that this was probably around 2012. It seems that for a few years after that, USA Today was provided but then it got dropped. I think this was about the time that cranberry juice got banned as well.In the days when Amtrak delivered papers onboard, the selection appeared to be based on what paper could get picked up at a staffed station in the early morning in time to be delivered to rooms while it was still the breakfast hour. If the train was running very late, the papers arrived late too.
I read both print and online daily. I find that I browse the print papers much more and tend to read articles that I wouldn't see (or ignore) online. Reading print to me is a more enjoyable and thoughtful experience.I really do miss getting the morning paper as a perquisite of sleeping-car travel, but I believe Amtrak discontinued this more than five years ago. Some of the en-route papers were pretty thin, like the Pueblo Chieftain I remember getting on the westbound SW Chief. But I also recall being impressed with some of the larger metro dailies that were delivered aboard the train, including the Cleveland Plain Dealer (when the Lake Shore ran on a later schedule westbound), the Buffalo News and many others. I did always feel a bit cheated when Amtrak gave us USA Today, which has none of the local flavor of papers produced in en-route cities but also lacks the depth of national coverage available in major dailies like the Washington Post or New York Times.
Of course, the newspaper industry overall is in terrible decline, and many small and mid-sized dailies have pared their operations to the bone or simply closed. As a longtime newspaperman, I have seen the results of this from the inside. The print newspaper at this point is probably an endangered species. One recent experience brought home to me how dire the situation has become: When I visited Boston South Station last month, I discovered that the newsstand in the concourse, where I have been buying newspapers on my visits to Boston for the past 35 years, was empty and closed. I did not see The Boston Globe or any other daily newspapers available anywhere in the station or on my walk around several blocks of the surrounding neighborhood. It's hard to see how newspapers stay relevant if they aren't even available in a major transportation hub.
I read both print and online daily. I find that I browse the print papers much more and tend to read articles that I wouldn't see (or ignore) online. Reading print to me is a more enjoyable and thoughtful experience.
The only places that I see Newsstands anymore are at Airports and at the larger Railroad Stations. Sometimes news vending machines can be found at smaller stations.
Enter your email address to join: