Worth its weight in gold - and don't you forget it


I read the Sarasota Herald-Tribune each day.  It's a better than average local paper.

 I'd let my subscription lapse, so I have been purchasing it from a nearby vending machine, four hot quarters or ten hot dimes in hand, as I have taken my morning constitutional with the dog.

 Today I needed eight hot quarters, or twenty hot dimes, or even forty hot nickels for the the price of the daily paper has gone up overnight (so to speak) from one dollar to two.

 No the H-T is not profiteering.  It is a victim (with every U.S.A. newspaper you know) of President Trump's arbitrary (?)  tariff whims.

 His Dept. of Commerce has placed a tariff on Canadian made newsprint (at the behest of just one U.S.A. based  newsprint producer (?) -  your guess is as good as mine).

 So it is that USA newspapers are having to pay 30% more for newsprint  (their second highest expense after labour).

 Given the existing stresses on newspapers with the migration of advertisers from print to internet, this new and diabolical tariff  may put many of them out of business.  

 Who cares:  unless your local small town paper is the only reliable source for local news.  That local news will most certainly not be available on the radio or T.V.

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 Two bucks a day -  is that an extortionate cost for reliable local news?   It's certainly cheaper than a Cappuccino at Starbucks.

 So I will be compelled to set up a subscription to the H-T. as soon as is possible.  I cannot trust myself to always have those eight quarters for the machine in my pocket.

 I need the

for its reportage on the foibles,  follies and successes  of local officials and politicians

for accounts of the worthy or inglorious decisions of  the City Commission in Sarasota, of  the Sarasota  County Commission, and of the Sarasota County School Board

for the paper's editorial page with its judicial reproduction of commentary from left and right

for the letters to the Editor, some of which make me snort with derisive laughter,  others of which inform my mind and will

for the extensive coverage of the arts and entertainment scene

Above all else for  important, courageous, fact based, and necessary investigative journalism (the most recent on prison sentence disparities in Florida' s Duval County). The Herald Tribune sheds light on otherwise dark places.

the list could go on.

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Dear Sarasota friends.    Is an extra dollar a day too high a price for the privilege and necessity of the Fourth Estate? 

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