[Pittsburgh] anyone else having problems with newspaper delivery?

[cellio]

I still enjoy reading a paper newspaper -- not for the national news, which I can get more efficiently online, but for local news and features, and for the tactile experience of reading it with a cat snuggled on my lap.

Pittsburgh has two newspapers, the right-wing one and the left-wing one. Both of them are oftentimes offensive to me with their editorial slant, but I find that the right-wing one is more moderate in its wing-ness and is generally less annoying to me. And, face it, I'm not going to find a paper in wide circulation whose editors I'll usually agee with. So, all things considered, I like getting the Trib, and I've been getting it ever since the now-defunct Press went on strike in 1993.

I understand that delivery can be challenging. The pay's probably crap, which makes it hard to keep good people, and someone has to get the paper to my house every morning anyway. I take this into account when tipping my carrier. For the last couple of years I have had excellent service.

Then, at the end of June, the Trib outsourced its delivery service -- to, it turns out, the Post-Gazette. My delivery service has degenerated badly; I would estimate that in the nearly two months since then, I have missed almost as many papers as I've received. Every time the routine is nearly the same: I call to complain, they (optionally) promise me a replacement paper, said paper (if promised) does not arrive, they promise that a circulation manager will call, and it doesn't happen in a timely manner. I have received two calls -- after stretches where papers were missed nearly every day, there'd be a good stretch for several days and then someone would call to ask if things were ok now. Both times I've said "so far"; the second time I said "but it didn't continue last time". I have yet to receive a call for the current run. The folks who answer the phones are not authorized to put me in direct touch with someone higher up, of course (or so the script says).

I'm fed up. The whole point of getting a daily paper is to have it show up without me having to do anything. I am not going to go to the trouble of seeking out a paper to buy every day, or on the days when the paper doesn't show up. If I can't shake a manager-type person loose, I will probably just cancel.

Is anyone else in Pittsburgh having delivery problems -- with either paper, since it's apparently the same people now? It might seem in the PG's interests to slightly degrade the outsourced service compared to their own, but I assume they're smart enough not to try that (it would get them a short-term win and a long-term loss). I'm curious how widespread the problem is, and if anyone else has been able to solve it.

My house isn't hard to find, and it has a nice wide porch and an uncluttered lawn -- a big target area, in other words.

(If I do cancel: can someone point me to a customizable web-based comics aggregator? Ideally I want to go to one page that displays today's strips from a list I specify. Following forward/back links for my subscription list would be acceptable. Having to find each strip in a menu/list is not. I don't want to syndicate to my LJ subscription list; I want them all in one place in a batch.)

Comments

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

I would be interested in such an aggregator myself.

[schulman.livejournal.com]

For a customizable comics aggregator, try the comics section of the Houston Chronicle online at www.chron.com. It lets you set up pages with all your strips embedded. (I think it wants to page you through 7 or 8 at a time, but if you tweak the URL, you can embed them all in one page, and just bookmark that location.)

[cellio]

Excellent! Thank you for this pointer.

"left-wing"?

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

Huh. I mean, they just grab all their columns from somewhere else. As for editorials themselves, who even reads those anymore. To me the Trib is like a hit sheet tabloid. I mean, I know you're living in a one-party state and all that...

Anyway, I just read the Times and spare myself the aggravation of a so-called "local" paper devoid of local news and reporting. But one has to have the cartoons. I use the My Yahoo home page to grab a few comics, but the list isn't very long.

Re: "left-wing"?

[cellio]

Yes, left-wing. These days the right wing believes (their view of) God knows best how you should live your life, while the left wing believes that government does. The only real difference is whether you're trying to keep the government out of your bedroom or out of your bank account. Neither is good as a matter of national policy. (Yes, of course I over-simplify, but it was meant to be a tangent. Someday when I have both much more time and an interested audience, maybe I'll hold forth on this more.)

I actually read editorials -- not directly for their content, usually, though I can appreciate a well-written piece by certain authors, but to understand which issues the editors feel most strongly about, so I can then evaluate the rest of their coverage in that light. Editorial spin also affects the choice of which stories/letters/columns to run, so even if they write relatively little of the news content, it's still a factor. (They also write much more of the local news themselves.)

[caryabend.livejournal.com]

Try calling the circulation director directly.

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/helpdesk/valleyindepphones.html

[cellio]

The voice mail I left has not yet produced results (which doesn't surprise me). :-(

[ariannawyn.livejournal.com]

I no longer get the paper delivered, but when I did, I got the Post-Gazette and there would be a delivery snafu about once a month. But then I only got the Sunday edition, since, like you, I get most of my news online (or on the radio). Phone calls to the circulation desk sometimes fixed it.

I think we've had this conversation before, but... regardless of political slant, it was Johan's experience that the Trib was an order of magnitude more INaccurate in its reporting than the P-G... to the point that, while he was working for the PWSA, he finally stopped talking to them rather than have them misquote him multiple times in any given article.

[cellio]

I'm aware that he had that opinion, yes. I've seen enough suspicious reporting in both papers to be wary, though obviously he had a different perspective.

You were getting roughly a 25% failure rate on delivery? Wow, how annoying!

[alaricmacconnal.livejournal.com]

We get the PG, mostly for the local news and have had very few problems ... most of the paper accidents are from me accidentally running it over because I forgot to grab it in the morning.

A comics aggregator would be great. We've talked about stopping our subscription except for the local news / comics.

[cellio]

About half the paper goes straight to the recyling pile, which is a real waste, so I've considered stopping for that reason too. I do want the other half, assuming they can be persuaded to bring it to me. A comics aggregator might tip the balance, though I'd still like an efficient way to get the local news. (Neither paper's web site was all that great the last time I looked, though I haven't looked recently. I expect I will soon.)

[tashabear.livejournal.com]

I made a page on my website with links to the comics I like to read.

[cellio]

Simple and straightforward. I feel silly that I didn't think of it on my own. :-)

[tashabear.livejournal.com]

If you get a gocomics.com membership, you can set up a comics page to flip through the comics you want... but not all the comics I like are on that site. Half of the syndicated comics I read are at Comics.com, and the rest are web comics.

This is my page: http://tasha.gallowglass.org/comix.html

[byronhaverford.livejournal.com]

I use Bloglines for my comic-aggregator. It's just an RSS reader, but it lets me combine online-only comics with traditional comics, and I can fav directly to the downloaded page. Some of the online comics like to monitor hits, so they remain a click away. And if I miss a day (or a week), the correct number of comics are waiting for me.

[cellio]

Thanks. Do all the comics you're interested in have RSS feeds? (Probably a dumb question these days -- probably everything does.) The backlog thing is a useful feature, too.

[byronhaverford.livejournal.com]

I have relatively limited number of traditional comics on my list (Hagar the Horrible just didn't make the cut). But I think that the syndicated comics (appropriately enough) will all have syndication.

[nsingman.livejournal.com]

You may remember that we canceled our Wall Street Journal delivery because the carrier couldn't promise delivery by the time I left the house. I hope that your carrier(s) can improve, and I hope you've made the alternative very clear!
:-)