Starbucks Cancels Subscriptions

I’m not a coffee drinker, so I rarely frequent Starbucks.

Now, I have even less of a reason to stop in.  Starbucks has sold the New York Times for nearly 20 years and the USA Today and Wall St. Journal for two decades.  This month the coffee chain will quit selling hard copies of all three publications.
I’ve been doing my part to keep the newspaper industry afloat.  While I don’t drink coffee, I do enjoy reading my morning paper.  Even on vacation, each morning I trudge to the nearest convenience store or street rack to buy the local daily newspaper.

This shun by Starbucks is really just another indication of the broader struggles facing the newspaper industry.  We’ve seen massive layoffs in newsrooms across the country as subscriptions and ad revenues have declined.

This elimination of a key distribution point is not a complete shocker, particularly based on how today’s consumers  are getting their news, but it’s a staple that dinosaurs like me just don’t like to see go away, even if I don’t drink coffee.