{"id":13195,"date":"2016-07-13T05:52:38","date_gmt":"2016-07-13T11:52:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=13195"},"modified":"2016-07-13T05:52:38","modified_gmt":"2016-07-13T11:52:38","slug":"when-is-a-month-less-than-a-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2016\/07\/when-is-a-month-less-than-a-month\/","title":{"rendered":"When is a month less than a month?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"This<\/a>

This is the logo of the Billings Gazette, which has not endorsed the contents of this post.<\/p><\/div>\n

Got a notice last month saying that the cost of my Billings Gazette subscription was rising to $33.60 a month. No surprise there. Rates go up.<\/p>\n

But I was confused, because I had been reading in the masthead this sentence: \u201cHome delivery subscribers of Premium Day papers will see a slight reduction in their subscription length to offset all premium day charges.\u201d<\/p>\n

Question 1: Why do I read the masthead? It started long ago when I became the editor of a central Texas daily. Not long after I started, somebody in the composing room inadvertently inserted into the paper an old masthead that omitted my name.<\/p>\n

Minutes after I got to the office, one of my old bosses called, wondering if I had been fired or quit. I\u2019m assured him that I had not (that would come later) and wondered how he had happened to read the masthead.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the first thing I read every morning,\u201d he said. Sound advice from a sage mentor.<\/p>\n

Question 2: What is a Premium Day paper? Good question. For one, the Thanksgiving Day paper, which sells for $4. Fine. The celebrated biggest paper of the year is the most overrated edition ever\u2014short on news but chock full of ads that I never look at because I refuse to shop anytime near Black Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cAdditional premium day editions which include our \u2018Better\u2019 section will be delivered on July 13 and in August.\u201d I don\u2019t know what the Better section is, and I have no idea why it costs $4, but I guess I will find out today.<\/p>\n

All of this brought to mind another question: If I pay by the month, how does the Gazette plan to reduce my subscription length? Turn every month into February? Create an 11-month year?<\/p>\n

So I called the number in the paper and was turned over to a pleasant and thoughtful woman who assured me that I could ignore what the masthead said. Monthly charges are assessed only once a month, she told me.<\/p>\n

She also signed me up for the free online access that is supposed to come with every subscription. I had been unable to sign up myself because the computer I discussed this with was unable, despite considerable swearing, to locate the account I have had for 24 years.<\/p>\n

So everything\u2019s cool, I guess, except now my email is overflowing every day with messages from the Gazette: breaking stories, daily obituaries, top headlines, local weather. If I wanted to read the Gazette by email, I wouldn\u2019t be paying $33.60 every month, or some portion thereof, to have it delivered to my front porch.<\/p>\n

Guess I will have to call them back, some Feb. 30.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Got a notice last month saying that the cost of my Billings Gazette subscription was rising to $33.60 a month. No surprise there. Rates go up. But I was confused, because I had been reading in the masthead this sentence: \u201cHome delivery subscribers of Premium Day papers will see a slight reduction in their subscription […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":13196,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","prominence-category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}