Morning after morning, a nice, small war was fought at our breakfast table. Everyone wanted to be the first to read the regional section of the “Sueddeutsche”: our small daughter, Barbara or another one of the children.
Personally, I would also have liked to first read the regional section, but being the oldest and wisest in the family :-), I was content to read the economy section first.
Since last Monday, the fight for the regional section is over.
On Monday morning, we really did an intense search all through the paper in order to find “our” regional section: south-east of Munich. Every one of us tried their best. But eventually we had to accept that it no longer exists.
Instead, we now have a new section “Munich and surrounding areas” highly praised by (only) the SZ. It contains lots of pictures and the graphics remind you a little of children’s books. This is what they call a new, wonderful improvement. To me, it looks more like someone making fun of me.
I miss all the small regional reports there used to be. They are now few and far between – and hard to find, because they have been scattered around all over the place.
As soon as you think about it, you realize: this is another saving measure with a detrimental effect on the reader. The regional additions are gone; the same is true for general and logistic costs. For this, a beautiful unique characteristic has been sacrificed. But who cares? Neither does anybody at the newspaper seem to spend any time thinking about the consequences.
It is a model for profit optimization at the cost of the customer! And on how to make your customers unhappy.
We and the readers were never asked. But we will react. As far as I am concerned, I decided that I am fed up and will cancel my subscription. After that, I will have finished my conversion to cyberspace, where I will find everything I used to find in all the rest of the “Sueddeutsche”. And I will find these things as often as I desire. The regional sector was the one thing that was unique.
And if at some time in the future there will be a regional newspaper covering our area, I will subscribe. That is a promise.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
P.S.
The weekday edition of the SZ (still!) costs 1.90 Euros. Without the regional sector.
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