Express-News leaves Karnes County

I first heard about it last November when I was out delivering our newspapers.

The manager of a local convenience store told me that she had been told that beginning January 1, the San Antonio Express-News was going to stop delivering papers to her store, and all the other vendor locations in Karnes County, as well.

It was shocking news.

"Can it be true?" I wondered.

I had my doubts, but sure enough, after the start of the new year, all the coinstands and newspaper vendor stands began to vanish.

I went online and found some information about the change.

The Express-News said that they just weren’t selling enough newspapers in these outlying areas to justify the expense of hiring people to deliver them to our area.

It really is a sad statement about the decline in readership of metro daily papers.

It didn’t really hit home until I saw the stands disappear.

I’ve read the Express-News for many years and although I also visit their web site, there are times when I want to read an actual "physical" copy of the paper and now, in order to do that, I’ll have to drive to Wilson County.

It seems to me that completely pulling out of Karnes County was a little "extreme."

Why not just scale back the number of vendor locations?

Even having just one coinstand in the middle of Karnes County would be better than nothing at all.

I wonder if they would let us sell the papers in a stand here at our office. I think we could find a way to pick up the papers and load the stands. We may have to charge a dollar instead of the usual 50 cents to help pay for the cost of driving back and forth to San Antonio each day, but I’d wager that a lot of people in Karnes County would pay that dollar. I’m going to get in touch with their circulation manager and see if they would be agreeable to that arrangement.

I don’t imagine many of the San Antonio retail advertisers were thrilled with the change.

I am sure that a significant number of their customers were drawn to San Antonio from Karnes County because of advertisements they saw in the Express-News. All of the sudden, many of those customers are going to stop shopping with these San Antonio businesses.

I’m not sure it was a sound business decision.

Only time will tell, I suppose.

Perhaps one day we will see copies of the Express-News back in Karnes County.