TMW vanished from a paper for a week or two recently (due to space issues), and a reader wrote me to ask about it. I forwarded the email to the editor, who replied:
I am glad to know that our readers miss their features enough to write in. That really does drive our decisions on what is OK — or not — to pull from print when we’re forced to do so.
Whether or not they acknowledge it so honestly, your emails to editors do make a difference. If you’ve stopped reading a paper because they dropped TMW, you should send them a note and let them know. If you pick up your local altweekly primarily to read TMW, you should let them know that as well. And if there’s a paper in your area that seems like a good fit for TMW, write them and tell them you’d very much appreciate seeing it there.
And, pre-emptively: yes, I understand print media are dying, blah blah blah. But as long as there are still newspapers, I want to be running in them. I don’t make enough income from online sources alone to pay the bills. And as my friend Derf says, I don’t want to be the appetizer course at the Donner Party. I’m just trying to hang in as long as I can — which is, when you think about it, pretty much what all of us are doing in this life.
Your support is, as always, appreciated more than I can say.
… tangentially related: Bors on the future of news.