‘I missed my newspaper’ – helping subscribers get The Oklahoman on their digital devices

I love talking to our subscribers.

We can’t do what we do as a company and as a news operation without our subscribers. That’s why I love speaking with them.

One of my favorite recent conversations was with a friend in early January. He’s a longtime subscriber of

who generally reads the newspaper on his iPad tablet. He also receives the printed newspaper at his home, but his personal preference is to read the paper on

Print Replica application.

He was telling me about a struggle he had using the Print Replica app a few weeks earlier. He couldn’t get his login to work.

Here’s something I know from my years in this business. Authentication to a premium digital product is always tricky. We try to make it as simple as possible while still following best practices regarding security – both for us and for our customers. But the bottom line is that we all forget our logins and passwords. It happens to all of us.

And in this case, my friend was experiencing that. The app was requiring authentication (many subscription apps require re-authentication after a certain time period).

As he told me the story, I took out my phone and was prepared to help him solve this issue on the spot. I never want a subscriber to be left without access to their favorite digital product.

He stopped me and said, “Wait … you don’t need to do that.” You see, there was more to the story, and he wanted to get to the conclusion before I dug deeper.

Back to his December login struggle. At the time of his password problem, he became frustrated enough that he unsubscribed to the newspaper.

Ooof. Authentication can really be frustrating for people. This is not a good conversation.

However, after a week or so of not seeing the newspaper, he was still talking about it in his home. His wife finally told him to “just go ahead and subscribe again!”

“I missed my newspaper,” my friend told me.

The story is getting a little better. I like to hear that. I just felt terrible that it took such a drastic step to realize how much he missed reading the newspaper each morning.

So let me assure every subscriber that we have a team of people in our customer service department that can help users that have technical issues with their passwords and logins. It often is as simple as a user not being able to remember the password. Or it could be complications with the password retrieval process we have online.

Regardless, our customer service representatives are happy to take your call or your email (or on a chat with you between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. each weekday).

There’s a ‘Contact Us’ link to see that information at the bottom of every page on Oklahoman.com.

And if that doesn’t work for you, email me at aherzberger@oklahoman. com. We will solve the issue.

I’m committed to helping you get

on your digital

device.