I canceled my subscription to the Peoria Journal Star today.

It wasn’t an easy decision, although it should have been. I guess I’m just a sentimental sort of guy. My grandfather worked at the Journal Star until he retired in 1974. I grew up in a household where my dad read the paper every day and was always well-informed of what was happening in the City. When I got to be a teenager, I started reading the paper a little myself. Then in adulthood I started reading it every day.

So why did I cancel? Two reasons. The biggest one will come as no surprise since I’ve complained about it many times before on this blog: The content is available for free online. This is the reason I should have canceled a long time ago. What a waste of money to pay the Journal Star $200+ a year for content that anyone can get on the Internet for nothing. It’s their prerogative if they want to take their hard work and give it away, but I’m not going to continue to subsidize everyone else’s access to it. If they ever decide to add value to buying a subscription, I’ll consider resubscribing.

Second reason: As if to add insult to injury, they’ve continued to raise the price while shrinking the size of the paper. First they gutted most of the sections (many of which were reduced to only four pages); now they’re converting the paper to a smaller format this month. Pretty soon it will be too small to wrap fish with, and then what good will it be?

Of course I’ll miss all their exciting “first in print” content — like articles on deer mating, do-it-yourself dialysis, and Disney-on-Ice ticket giveaways. I’m not sure how I’ll survive.

I was surprised at how easy it was to cancel. When I canceled my cable TV, the Comcast customer service rep asked me why and if there was anything she could do to keep me as a subscriber. She was insincere, of course, but at least she asked. The Journal Star didn’t even do that. They apparently have no interest in keeping me as a subscriber. So be it.