A further sign of fiscal desperation in the newspaper industry?

I love my iPad. 

I have become hooked on reading my morning issue of The Washington Post on my iPad. And the digital access hasn't cost anything extra to our home delivery subscription of the paper.

But of course, the home delivery is now costing us over $60 every eight weeks, while a household digital subscription by itself would cost only $30 for that same period.

So, over the past few months I have lobbied my wife for us to make the change. She is certainly no digital Luddite. She has balked at the proposal because, rightfully so, she has been unhappy with the look and function of the digital version of The Post on her smaller-screened Kindle.

Obvious husband solution: buy her an iPad for Xmas. To which, together with my daughter, we did.

Susanne loves her new iPad (btw, ahem, hers has a retina screen which mine doesn't . . .), and I just got the green light from her to switch the household to the money-saving digital subscription of The Post.

So I called the Post's subscription line, and everything proceeded fine with the rep on the other end of the phone. Then, to my surprise, she offered the following: She said that since we've been such loyal customers (ok, ok), she could offer us a special promotion, valid til Dec. 31st, where we could get the digital subscription AND keep the home delivery, for a year, at a cost that works out to less that $11.50 per month -- yeah, about $3.50 less per month than the digital subscription alone.

Huh? Well, once I confirmed that there were no catches, and discussed it with my wife, I took the offer. (Ok, yes, we do feel a bit guilty about the additional trees we'll be killing, but they are now at least using some recycled material for the printed paper)

Why is The Post offering to give us both services for less than the digital alone?

Well, my wife got it quicker than I. She said it's because this arrangement allows The Post to officially count us as both a print and a digital subscriber -- which is important to them when presenting to potential advertisers. 

Now, we've been getting free copies delivered to us of the Sunday issue of The Baltimore Sun for awhile now, but what does it say about the newspaper industry's present business model that The Post feels they have to in effect, pay us, to take the printed issue?

Whew, thank god, I guess, at least for The Washington Post's sake, that someone with deep pockets, online savvy, and patience, like Amazon's Jeff Bezos is taking over the helm.

Oh, and P.S. he may want to do something to address my wife's concerns about how The Post functions on her Kindle.

P.P.S. In talking with my daughter (the Economics major) about this, she said, "Well, the physical paper can act as a "brand reminder" that you have a digital Post account, what with so many free online sources for news available." Hmmm, I can see that Mr. Bezos indeed has a BIG challenge on his hands to make money with this new generation of young adults.