It’s $2.00 for a slice of pizza and 50 cents for the Tribune. This is something someone says in a documentary on the death of the Tampa Tribune. I read about this in The Tampa Bay Times, which bought and killed the Tampa Tribune. It’s quite sad what is happening to daily newspapers.

Tampa Bay used to have the Tampa Tribune and Tampa Times. Across the bay was the St. Petersburg Times and one other I am not remembering now. The St. Petersburg Times became the Tampa Bay Times in 2012, they won the right in a lawsuit. This is sort of a dubious thing as it sort of was the writing on the wall for the end of the Tampa Tribune and reminiscent of the Tampa Times. But again, daily newspapers are going the way of the dinosaurs and that’s sad.

Ironically, The Tampa Bay Times is featuring the documentary about their own killing off of the Tampa Tribune in a story in their own publication along with a movie trailer

I still read the daily newspaper – holding in my hands the old fashioned way. I read the Miami Herald daily and sometimes the Sun-Sentinel which is the Ft. Lauderdale newspaper.

When I was a kid, I could read seven dailies in two counties – The Miami Herald, The Miami News, The Ft. Lauderdale News, the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, the South Dade News-Leader and the Hollywood Sun-Tattler. Loved the name of that one – the Sun-Tattler. That building is now a Holiday Inn, I believe. I also want to mention the Key West Citizen, which is still published daily. Love them.

My parents subscribed to the Herald and the South Dade-News Leader and I would occasionally buy the others. In New York, I used to read the four dailies – the Times, Daily News, Post and Newsday. I sometimes still do. When I was a kid, I delivered the now defunct Long Island Press.

It’s shocking how small the Miami Herald is these days in size. In height and width, but also in content. When we were kids and we took road trips around the country, small towns in Tennessee and Georgia had tiny newspapers – at least they had newspapers. Now the Miami Herald is very small. But it still is delivered seven days a week and I read it, holding it in my hands, like the old days.

I do read many publications online that I normally would not if there wasn’t an online way to do it. I don’t read the whole newspaper, but I follow so many news organizations online that I read stories here in there from various newspapers around the country. So that is a great thing. But there is something about holding the actual newspaper in your hands, smelling the paper and ink, having it on your doorstep each morning. There’s something special in that.