Jacob Christensen

Right. Bleg #1 didn’t solve the problem, but it gets worse. As the slug says: I’m also trying to figure out just how many morning papers I need. Or want.

Perhaps we should start with the easy bit: I subscribe to Weekendavisen and Die Zeit which arrive each Friday. In case you wonder, the German Wochenzeitung doesn’t mean that the paper is published every week. It means that it takes a week to read the paper. (The same applies to Tageszeitung, at least when we are talking about Süddeutsche Zeitung or Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung).

Back in the 1990s – before I moved to Sweden – I subscribed to Politiken and Berlingske Tidende and, let’s face it, reading two different papers was and can still be interesting. Unfortunately, I cleaned my archive when I moved from UmeÃ¥, but as far as I remember a 12-month subscription to any of those papers was around 2500 to 3000 DKK. So subscribing to two papers would set me back 5000-6000 DKKK. These days, a 12-month subscription is 4000+, so two papers would set me back some 9000 DKK now. And back in the 1990s, the internet was something you had access to at work.

Enter my Old Mother who threw a gift subscription to Politiken after me when I moved back to Denmark. That one is up for renewal in mid-October, but just to add to my misery Mother recently decided that I needed a month’s subscription to Berlingske Tidende as well. Or perhaps she was just tired of being approached harassed by Berlingske’s salesforce. So right now I’m back in the 1990s with two morning papers delivered every morning. Except, I no longer get the papers in my hall (or whatever it should be called) but in the post box at the front door to the house.

I don’t know. I think both papers are okay, but 9000 DKK really is a lot of money. A heck of a lot of money, as it is.

My department for some reason subscribes to Politiken, Jyllands-Posten, Fyens Stiftstidende and BT (!), but not Berlingske Tidende. On the other hand, I’m probably, all things considered, more of a Politiken person (you know, self-righteous public employee. The kind who would read The Guardian in the UK. Oh, dear…).

If I was an economist, everything would be easier: They just go for the cheap subscription offers and change papers like other people change clothes.

But: Should it be two or one? And in that case, which one? Decisions, decisions…

PS: When I lived in Sweden things were a bit easier for another reason. DN was the only national newspaper that was distributed every day in the week in Umeå and my workplace subscribed to both local newspapers. That said, reading DN was often a strange experience.

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