A sad state of affairs for The Union Tribune in San Diego.
The Union Tribune is the only large newspaper in San Diego. They have no competition and yet they are barely surviving. The newspaper has to cut back on their staff with a number of them being fired. The VP has replaced these positions and others with companies outside the state of California and even as far away as Panama City, Panama. So If you have a question for The Union tribune you better polish up on your spanish as it is very difficult to understand their English.
That is a couple of ways they are saving money. The two ways that I discovered at my expense they are adding profit to their if your a subscriber.
1, If you are a subscriber and it is time to renew, you do not have to worry about a thing because the company has decided to take that decision away from you at time of re-newel. Example: I just found out that The Union Tribune has renewed me automaticlly. Their explanation when I called them today was that when I first subscribed to the paper last year they made business decision to write in their (somewhere) that they will automatically renew my subscription without notifying me at time of re-newel. How considerate of them, don't you think?
2, They also changed their vacation hold policy, that they do not mention when you first subscribe. With other newspapers and theirs in the past if you went on a vacation instead of having newspapers build up on your driveway, you could request a vacation hold for financial and security reasons. They would then add those days onto the end of your yearly subscription so you get what you paid for.They have a new policy which I might say must earn them considerably more profit from the subscriber. They still will honor your request for a vacation stop but they will not extend your subscription nor credit you the money. This is a great way to boost your bottom line because you incur no cost and gain 100% profit. Wow, what and idea, no cost and all profit.
I guess this is one way of keeping local businesses profitable. But as I already pointed out that The San Diego Union Tribune is not local anymore. They now have a good portion of their employees sub contracted outside of San Diego and even the U.S.
Which brings me to my point of why I even subscribed to The Union Tribune. It wasn't because I read the paper everyday but I thought it was a small way on my part to keep a local company going. Now that I found out this company is not local, but my subscrption goes to pay the salaries to support out sourcing companies in other countries I no longer have a reason to support The Union Tribune.