Jackson Jambalaya

Does this include obits?

In all of this raising their subscription rate by 22% is the dumbest business decision in their whole bunch of stupid. You make it real easy for existing customers to churn out with a price bump that size. The digital access isn't worth $4 let alone $10 and the quality of their print product has never been worse.

The speed of the decline in C-L's news and editorial content over the summer has been disturbing. Less and less local news (except for puff pieces on American Idol celebrities, etc.), pointless "blog writers" and rehashed wire/USA Today articles. Several times they have even run the same wire article in two different sections of one day's paper. Gary Pettus, one of the few remaining journalists, has bailed out. Folks, we are watching the not-so-slow death of an institution. You may not have always agreed with the C-L's stance (during Hederman days or afterwards) but at least you knew it was a real newspaper when it landed on your sidewalk.

All the ads and inserts make it worth the price! With the coupons I actually save thousands of dollars a year. It just takes a few hours a day.

As long as my birds are shittin', I'm subscribing!

Whaddya mean 22%?

That's only if you let 'em auto-ding your credit card each month.

The real spike is over 33%.

What are the other resources for reading the obits? Will Legacy.com still get you to them?

I'm not defending the Clarion Ledger, but it seems that the criticisms are like kicking someone when they are down. Like getting mad at the stablekeeper in, say, 1910. No question that print media is on the ropes, as more people get their news online. So in the interest of free-market capitalism who can blame them for trying to change their business model? I'm no news executive, but I imagine hiring a reporter that can spell, edit, and basically get the story right costs more than hiring some dummy that cannot.

Let's all hope they can get the quality up, and if they can, let's all be willing to pay for it, if it's worth it. A good source of news and information is an important part of any democracy.

For now I guess I'll change my home page from the CL to JJ, or some other reliable source.

1:16 p.m. hit it on the head. Once upon a time I was a reporter for the Jackson Daily News and we weren't the greatest in the free world, but we reported news and there was a state desk that had stringers, usually reporters on other newspapers, across the state. And we covered the Legislature like a blanket. Today, WLBT has police reports that don't even appear in the C-L. The police beat has moved to "enterprise stories." And, yes, I've had enough with Idol and out-of-state bloggers. The new C-L site has an enewspaper that shows every page and coupons can be clipped. In the future this is the way newspapers will be delivered, but today not everybody has access to the internet, but at some point that will change and with it the Goss Metroliner presses will be just big piles of iron.

I have subs to both the CL and the Wall Street Journal. I love the WSJ and I will keep that subscription. You are correct that it is $119 per year. I will be letting the CL sub expire. I don't find much of anything in it useful to me.

If you are not absolutely disappointed in the Clarion Ledger this summer, then your job must be on the line over there. Stuff that is on Drudge is showing up on 2nd and 3rd page of Clarion Ledger the next week. The local stuff is bad, surrounded by useless National news. I'm giving them football season and then most likely done.

I'm a fiscal conservative. Never did pay for the Clarion Liar. I get the digital edition of the WSJ though.

www.legacy.com keeps obituaries for each state. In their search box on the right of the home page, you can look up a specific name OR you can look up the obits for a specific area.

Example: leave out the name part, choose 'today' as the time frame, choose Mississippi as the state, search....there's the obits for the state of Mississippi.

If you want to narrow it down further, look on that results page for the drop down menu that has "all Mississippi obituaries" preloaded. That drop down menu contains all of the MS newspapers which carry the local obits. You can choose a newspaper and click search. The obituaries from legacy for that newspaper will be displayed for you and you have access to them.

Obits, home pages, classifieds and all that stuff is free at c-l.

Stories, videos, photo galleries count toward the 10 limit.

Hank said,

Attention 1:33 hold on to your job at CL. Understand furloughs are still a comin.

Attention 2:09 Clarence You should be able to see the decline in the CL over the last few years. As a former employee I attended the 4PM budget meeting. A crazy name for pats on the back by executives for yesterdays paper and plannig for tomorrows paper. Long time writers and proofers were scoffed at in these meeting when corrections were attempted. Now matter how bad single copy sales were for the day before (stores/coin racks) they all got pats on the back and told how great they were, then one day bam its all gone. Small local papers that still cover local news are doing OK. It has never been about national news. To quote the Ragin Cagin "its local stupid".

Reminds me of an old Southern expression;

"Blind leading the Blind"

Management at CL and Gannett can't see the forest for the trees. It is not a sustainable business model especially with current leadership. Its not about news online because all newspaper are going with a paywall. It is about how to be relevent on your local stage.

I subscribe and will continue to. I also tinker with it on-line sometimes. How will 'they' know I subscribe when I go on-line?

I'm not sure the information given above about obituaries is accurate. Even with some of the small town papers you cannot get access to the text of the obituary without paying for it. We'll see.

I stopped my subscription effective today, and they still delivered. I hope the delivery person doesn't have to pay. Half page ads on the front section, getting rid of the Cleveland bros, Orley and the others that had interesting things to way is just more than I wanted to pay for. I get more and better info off the web at work during lunch. For free. Steve g

"getting mad at the stablekeeper in, say, 1910."....

The brothers Fisher had a successful horse and buggy mfg. company back in the late 1800's.
About 1909, it became obvious the car was overtaking the horse as THE NEW technology.

In 1910 there was still a need for stables and blacksmiths, but auto repair shops were becoming much more important.

The Fishers adapted by transitioning into a "modern" company making the interiors of these new "autos" for GM.

Remember the floor logo on GM cars " Body by Fisher " ?

While the Fisher Bro's were adapting to these technological advances, they weren't jacking up the price of old horseshoes to those who couldn't
yet afford a new Model T . " Win-Win" for all, ... as they say.

However, the current management generation grew up studying such theory as " My two Daddies" ,
rather than basic principles of common business sense .

free at last! my 25 year relationship with the clarion ledger came to a end this morning! whew! no more bill minor wringing his hands and gnashing his teeth about civil was era ghost...however, my parrot will miss it...

CL? They will disappear in Google News b/c no one will read them. That will be a very insurmountable obstacle. I did notice they allow 10 reads until you have to pay. That will keep them in the hunt until they realize at the end of the the 10 free, they disappear altogether online and are left to compete with the likes of tablogs.

Anon 7:46, I stopped my subscription back in 2007 or 2008 and kept getting a paper until 2011. I even emailed Hampton to tell him to tell Agnew to quit throwing it out on his way to work. No success.

It has been obvious for years they have revenue problems. Online classified job sites and sales sites like eBay and craigslist have really put the hurt on the CL. I can remember that a company I worked for paid almost thousand dollars for a job ad. Now that revenue goes to the Internet.

If the CL were smart, and they are not, they would start charging for wedding announcements. Don't y'all remember when they used to have pages of wedding announcements and the competition for bigger and better announcements was evident.

I will keep my subscription to the CL not because I agree with their editorials, but because it's good for the community. MisKelly's and the car dealerships all need to be able to justify their amounts that they spend to sustain the CL via their ads.

They now have Tom Head and Sam Hall as their writers/columnists. Need I say more? Thats what happens when you bring in these foreigners like Hurst and fire all the local people. You wind up hiring town idiots no one takes seriously.

One step forward and five steps back. Giving Tom Head any inches beyond a Letter to the Editor is a big mistake. Hurst can't encourage the suburbs to pay for her rapidly shrinking paper while trying to shove one of Head's opinions down their throat. Head makes David Hampton look like a radical conservative.

Tom Head????? LMAO TOM HEAD?????

What's next?

Asking Ladd to write for them?

Stupid, Stupid, STUPID

Sam Hall. Doing for the Clarion-Ledger what he did for the Democratic Party.

They already charge for wedding ads. A lot.

Content like this will make them irrelevant before you understand whata radical male feminist is!

KK, ease up on Tom Head, he's special.

There was a time the C-L was the newspaper of record for the entire state and had 5-6 reporters covering the capitol during legislative sessions. But make no mistake, they were as agenda-driven then as now. William Winter could never have passed education reform and Ray Mabus would never have been elected governor without the C-L's constant cheerleading. Those were heady days, back when the Mississippi Democratic Party was riding high the only question about future leadership involved a battle between guys named Dowdy and Molpus. Then Fordice came along and pissed in the punchbowl. Things just never worked right after that.

The contrast between Jackson's response to the CL's woes and New Orleans is an indication of how out of touch the Clarion Ledger is with its readers. I don't expect to agree with every editorial or column, but when there's a clear agenda, and it's one that pisses me off, don't expect me to cry when things are going well. I'm sure many others feel the same.

What do you expect? Its not like most CL reporters over the years have made themselves part of the community. Elizabeth Crisp and Marshall Ramsey did and guess what, they developed a following. You never see them out, never run into them at the store or at a restaurant, unlike the broadcast anchors and reporters.

$5

So....running into someone at the store equates to their being a member of the community? And running into them at a restaurant? Maybe you're at the wrong Krystal, Kangaroot.

Kangaroot - Kingfish. I get the two confused constantly.

Not enough pictures for ya' eh' shootmefoot?

Nothing has disappointed me more than the decline of the C-L. I will, however, give up my subscription in 2 more months after 31 years.