• The Hook, Friday, October 13, 2006 12:15 PM

"After 37 years of subscribing to the daily newspaper, I wrote 'cancel' on the last bill and sent it back," writes Mariane Matera. After nearly four decades, it's obvious to her that she is not the young demographic--and neither have newspapers been able to attract it, as print journalism is low-tech and costs money. She says she is of the age group that is still reading a daily newspaper out of long habit. "But one reason I let my subscription lapse is the fee, which seems out of proportion these days to how much of the paper I actually look at," she writes. And to compensate for the rising cost of everything, she had to make a cut somewhere. She needs to keep HBO until "The Sopranos" ends, and didn't want to give up XM radio because she falls asleep to Alan Colmes on Fox Talk: "So the thing I spent the least time with--the newspaper--had to go."

Read the whole story at The Hook »