By Joe Moore

After 26 years, I’ve canceled my daily subscription to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. The main reason was delivery issues which I won’t go into here. Suffice it to say, at some point the aggravation factor exceeds the patience factor.

I really enjoy sitting at my kitchen counter each morning sipping my mug of freshly brewed Dunkin Donuts coffee while I peruse the paper. It’s a morning ritual decades old.

So what do I do now? How do I get the local news beyond just watching the network affiliates? Solution: For $5 every four weeks, I subscribe to the digital edition of the paper. It only took a few minutes to realize this is a very cool alternative. Each day, I click on an email link that takes me to a perfect, pristine, crystal clear copy of the paper. This is not a website but the actual newspaper in digital format. It’s searchable. I can zoom in on all photos and ads. I can jump to different sections. I have access to back issues. Everything is there that’s in the printed version and is visually the same.

No more hoping the delivery guy throws the paper in my yard and not my neighbor’s. No more worrying if it will land in a puddle and be a water-soaked log by the time I get it. No more need to put the old newspapers out at curbside for recycle every Thursday. No more chopping down trees.

I have moved from the kitchen counter to my desktop monitor to read the paper and drink my DD. It’s fast, convenient, and fun. I only wish I’d made the switch long ago.

And it’s just another sign of the changing times in print media versus digital format.

How about you? Do you still read an analog version of the paper? Or do you use your phone, tablet or PC instead? Or have you abandoned the local newspaper altogether?