I subscribe to both the local papers, and I subscribe to several different magazines. But they treat renewals differently. When you subscribe to a magazine, you start to get renewal reminders within just a couple months after starting a subscription. They continue on several times a month, offering a variety of different deals and packages.
Newspapers, on the other hand, at least in the case of the St. Pete Times and the Tampa Tribune, barely send any reminders. In fact, the one reminder I got from the Times assured me that I would continue to receive my daily paper "several weeks" after my subscription expired, to ensure "uninterrupted service".
And true to their word, I still get a daily paper, well over a month after my subscription has run out. Both papers actually still deliver to my door, actually (I haven't renewed because I'm moving at the end of the month).
So with all this talk about the newspapers being a dying business, and with some even calling for a newspaper "bailout", consider the cost of printing and delivering a paper to someone who isn't paying for it. Multiply that by the number of other people who stopped subscribing, some who may even know how to work the system to get the most out of their dollars, and you can see that even dying industries still waste their money.
