Newspaper of the Twin Cities

If there is something that we must be in the business (and when I say the business I mean the industry), it is consistent and reliable. Each and every one of our customers comes into our stores with some type of expectation. If we don't meet those expectations, and in some cases exceed those expectations, that particular customer may go to another store to buy their music.

Sometimes those expectations are unrealistic. Other times the expectations are what we should automatically provide: good selection, good layout of product, excellent service, competitive prices and a clean friendly atmosphere. That's not to say providing those things is a take for granted, easy task. It is to say that if we fail to provide those things we won't be very successful. The same holds true with all kinds of businesses. When we are dealing with somebody for the first time we do have some sort of preconceived basic expectations. When we are dealing with the same person or company for a second or third time, those expectations begin to rise.

I have a bet with my sister that by the year 2000, newspapers as we know them will no longer exist. With rising paper and production costs and declining readership, I am predicting by the turn of the century to get a newspaper you will have to go on-line or get your news through some other form of technology. At the last apartment complex I lived in there were twelve apartments and only three of us got one of the two daily newspapers. My apartment complex prior to that consisted of about thirty different units and there were five or six of us who got newspapers.

Coming from a journalism background and having read a newspaper for just about as long as I can remember, my prediction sort of saddens me. I enjoy waking up early to get my two newspapers, pour myself a cup of coffee and catch up with the prior day's events. When I visit another city one of the first things I check out is their newspaper to see how it compares with others I have read.

We are blessed to live in an area that does have two major metropolitan dailies. While the quality of each has slipped a bit over the past couple of years (too much USA Today television style summary reporting with more flash then substance), there still is no better way to get your daily news then to pick up either the Pioneer Press or the Star Tribune (although Channel 2's NewsNight is fast catching up).

These days I have less time to read both newspapers before I leave for work. I usually page through the Trib and then just glance through the Pioneer Press for anything that looks interesting. I've thought about stopping service on one of the two but herein lies the dilemma. At this point I think because of its resources, the Star Tribune puts out a superior product. They obviously have a bigger staff and it seems often that the Pioneer Press is just a training base for the Knight-Ridder empire, sending its quality writers to other newspapers in the chain when they complete their apprenticeship in St. Paul. However, the delivery service I get from both newspapers is like night and day.

My St. Paul paper is always there for me when I awake at 6:00 a.m. It is put in the cylinder next to my door so I never have to search for it. My Minneapolis paper is almost never delivered on time. Over the summer I almost developed a safari like approach to trying to find where my carrier delivered the paper that day. Because it is important to me to read my newspaper before I leave for work, when I cancel one of the two papers it will probably have to be the Tribune despite their superior product. It ain't any good to me if it ain't there to read.

Now I 'm just guessing at how they came up with the word "news" but it probably was back in the days when word of an event would spread from town to town. Since these events were relatively recent, perhaps it was then they were dubbed news. Therefore once I hear about some event, and read or get into some discussion or other form of analysis on that event, it is no longer news, it's olds. I may get angry at something I read in the newspapers (i.e. the Pioneer Press' lame endorsement reasoning of supporting Rudy Boschwitz in the senate race) but being angry enough to think about something is better than being angry because the material isn't even there to read in the first place. People are always saying if we privatize more of our governmental services those services will automatically improve. Well, getting a good newspaper delivery person proves otherwise. My mail arrives on time. It gets delivered to my mailbox where I expect it. Is it expecting too much of the same for me to demand the same from my news carrier?