As of New Year's Day this year, the Ebata family has discontinued its newspaper subscription.

I made this proposal shortly after we were married.

It has been 30 years.

I withdrew my proposal after receiving protests from my wife's family and relatives, in addition to her fierce opposition to my view that 'news on the Web is enough.

Well, maybe my views 30 years ago were a bit too advanced.

Back then, there were no cell phones, let alone smartphones, and only a few people were using computers.

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TV program listings can now be viewed with TV recording devices, and news is automatically added as a service menu on social networking sites.

On the other hand, newspapers continue to be structured nonsensical, requiring the reader to spread out the paper and insert the article in the fold.

I have not found any "areas that have evolved as an easy-to-read medium over the past 30 years," such as the inability to read articles in succession without moving to the next page.

There is no attempt to create a tailor-made newspaper to meet the readers' demands or anything like that.

(By the way, I don't need the sports and literature articles, so I want a newspaper that cuts them out and makes them cheaper.)

Aside from entertainment scandals, we do not hear any stories about political scandals (political funding, etc.), such as newspaper scoops.

(Incidentally, I was one of those people who read the part about the scoop fight in "Climber's High" and thought, "Are newspaper reporters idiots?")

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Recently, however, when I began to think that I might need the newspaper to keep up with news in fields in which I have no interest, my wife came to suggest that we discontinue the newspaper.

Since there was no reason to disagree otherwise, I agreed.

If I feel like subscribing again, I might try to subscribe to "Akahata" or "Seikyo" this time.