Effective in October, all Kroger stores including City Market and King Soopers will no longer allow free community publications to be present. This is a decision nationwide made at the corporate level.

So, no more real estate or rental publications. No more Christian business publications. No more shoppers. No more papers for the Latino community. No more alternative weeklies, like The Independent. And worst of all, no more Life After 50 newspapers for us seniors!

The Kroger CEOs have decided that nobody reads newspapers anymore. They don’t see any value, monetarily or as a commitment to the communities from where they draw their popularity and profits.

Another part of the Kroger edict is they continue to sell books, magazines, the Wall Street Journal, the Denver Post, and other newspapers out-of-area that cost you money. And some are pretty expensive! Why single out free papers from our city?

Life After 50 readership has been growing over the years – not shrinking at all. The paper has increased its page count due to advertiser growth. This means we can offer you more stories and news along with more ads. And so we have!

Not a day goes by that we don’t hear praise from our readers. Usually it’s a simple message, “I just love your paper!” Seniors are so very different than millennials. They like to get their news the old-fashioned way. We still like to hold a newspaper in our hands, slowly inspecting each page, laughing at the jokes, reading each page carefully, sometimes returning to a story or advertisement of special interest.

At every trade show we attend, our readers stop by our booth, just to tell us how much they love Life After 50.  We often ask what they like best and hear many different answers. It is obvious that our attempts to furnish you a great news product have been fulfilled.

At our website http://www.lafifty.com you can read the entire latest issue of the paper and even go into back issues if you missed one from last summer, for example.

We are searching for new delivery spots to take up the slack. Have lots of newly bought newspaper racks to put in location. We now have papers at the Safeway in Falcon and in two more high traffic spots in Monument. Let us know if you need one at a store, restaurant or commercial area near you.

If you are a regular King Soopers shopper and want to voice your concern, you’ll find a Kroger/King Soopers customer complaint form in this month’s paper to drop off at the King Soopers you normally frequent (page 17).