My father has read the NYT pretty much all his life. Especially the Sunday Times. He worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer and knows how difficult it is to produce a decent newspaper every day of the week. The City Room of a newspaper, he often said, was poetry in chaos. Noisy. Cluttered. Crowded. Smoky (this was the 2-pack-a-day 60's). Often raunchy, ribald and sexist. But, always in the end, super efficient. Stories got written and edited, facts were checked, photos were chosen, cropped and stripped in (never retouched!). Type got set in hot zinc Linotype machines. Pages were laid out. Ads were inserted. And the presses started running right on time. Always. Deadlines were drop-deadlines. Miss one and you were on the bubble. Do it again and you were looking for another job.

He's always loved newspapers. But the Times was not just another newspaper. Over the years, he would often advise me, "read the Times at least a couple of days a week and Sunday and you will always be an educated man." He marveled at the Sunday Magazine and said it alone was worth the price of the paper (he said that mostly back when you got change for $5 when you bought it). He read everything in the Book Section (usually starting with the ad on the back cover for rare editions.) The Week In Review was sandwiched between CBS Sunday Morning, Meet the Press and Sunday Football. And, of course, he would do The Crossword Puzzle (reminding me that Friday's and Saturday's puzzles were more difficult). When the Times went digital, he made it the first page that came up on Windows Explorer. He loved emailing articles and sharing his thoughts. He still picked up the newsprint version at Starbucks or at the airport. And really preferred it, ads and all -- except he missed being able to instantly email.

Then, last year, he bought a Sunday home delivery subscription for $15 a month plus a very cool (to him, anyway) NYT Tote. He appreciated that blue-wrapped paper in the driveway every Sunday and he loved that he could follow up anything he read by searching and sending articles from his phone and iPad and even posting them on Facebook.

When the Times announced that it would limit electronic access to subscribers, he was reassured that his Sunday subscription counted. He was a happy camper. No matter what techies like me said about dinosaurs, he and the Times would continue merrily on.

Then something started to happen. Whenever he logged on to the Times site, there would be a delay. Not long, maybe 30 seconds, but not instant either. (I told my Dad, as we moved him along in the digital age, that speed was addictive and you could never go back to a slower response time). He realized that the Times was checking his subscription each time he logged in. Annoying but not a deal breaker.

Then, the Times upped his subscription to $24. (His introductory deal expired, but he could keep the Tote!) At that price, he'd just as soon pick up a copy at the Deli and not pay extra when traveling. With 20 articles a month available online free, and the digital Times now just one of many news Apps he scans, he cancelled his subscription.

Then came the deal breaker. He read an interesting article online and started to email it.   But he was notified that, in order to share that article, he had to subscribe.

So this is an obituary, of sorts, for the New York Times. After 60 years, they've lost my dad. He uses Bing and Flipboard as his preferred portals to the Internet. If he can't easily share an article, he avoids returning to a site. There are way too many free, sharable sources.

If they've lost an old newspaperman like my Dad, the New York Times is facing a looming deadline. A drop-deadline. Do they think they'll replace him with my 20-something sons? Maybe they should rethink their masthead mission statement and how they approach the new media world.

How about, "All the news that's fit to Share"? 

BTW... The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News just announced that they are offering $99 Android tablets to subscribers of their digital Apps. They've come a long way from hot zinc Linotype machines!