Came back from vacation with 2 Sunday papers on my doorstep. Inspiring a real good conversation Sunday afternoon with my sister, Kari. She’s just that bit younger than me that newspapers don’t exist in her world. She doesn’t read them and she was nice enough to listen to me vent.

As always, the writing in the Strib isn’t fantastic – I even read this week’s cover story (laws destroying local meth production encouraged importation from Mexico), though not much more. If the stories don’t read like simplistic editorial they read like thinly veiled advertisements – wrapped in obvious advertisements.

For all the effort it takes to publish and deliver the paper to me on a weekly basis – sure seems like it’d have a much higher cover price than $1.75 – (it costs me that to move the paper from the front step to the recycling bin).

What if the Strib wasn’t 99.9% ad subsidized? Would I pay $10-20 / week to have the Star Tribune delivered with amazing writing? Writing you’d pick up on a Wednesday to re-read, or continue reading. Writing that provided complexity, calls to action, analysis, and recognized that the newspaper itself is simply one piece of my information resources.

As I’m imagining this world where the Minneapolis Star Tribune is more like the Harvard Business Review, Kari picks up a stack of coupons Jen clipped earlier.

$0.55 here, $0.60 there, another $0.20, eventually enough to cover the paltry cover price.

Is this all I should be expecting from the Strib? Cause, even the St. Anthony Bulletin‘s writer makes the police log an entertaining read…and that’s a free paper…free like public radio is free.