Used to be, I would spend most of a Sunday reading The New York Times, which made for a pretty relaxing day of lazing around, drinking tea, and flipping through just about every section of the paper (except for sports). But that was years ago now -- I read news online today, and the idea of newspapers kinda makes me laugh: Who wants to read yesterday’s news today on a dead tree when you can read today’s news now with no sacrifice required of Arboreal-Americans?
But last year, I got the crazy notion in my head to try to reclaim those lazy Sundays, since Sundays have morphed into just another work day for me now, and so I ordered the weekend edition of the Times, which means that on Saturday you get the Saturday paper and all the sections of the Sunday paper that aren’t supertimely, like Arts & Leisure and the Book Review, and all the coupon circulars and such. And then on Sunday you get the Sunday newsy sections. And after three months of papers piling up and never getting read -- and after the revelation that the Times had withheld a story the previous November about Felony No. 8,455 of the Bush Administration because the paper’s editors were worried it would influence the presidential election when that was precisely what it should have done, and rightly so -- I cancelled my subscription.
The paper kept on coming, every Saturday and every Sunday.
I called the Times to confirm that they had received my cancellation and would no longer be charging my credit card for the paper. They assured me they had received my cancellation and would no longer be charging me.
The paper kept on coming. I kept not getting billed for it.
I called again. Yup, the Times had me down has cancelled, nope, the Times would not be billing me in any way.
That was a year ago. The paper keeps coming. I keep not being billed.
At some point I realized that, with the state of frantic worry dead-tree publications are in these days, I must be so valuable to the Times as a name on a roster of subscribers that it’s worth more to send me a free paper every Saturday and Sunday than the money the company would save by NOT delivering these papers to me. The newspaper trade publication Adotas reports:
The Newspaper Association of America states that daily newspaper circulation is down 13% from its peak of 62.8 million in 1985.
I’d actually be surprised if that figure hadn’t been massaged a bit -- newspaper circs are down only 13 percent? I bet it’s more like 25 or 30 percent... or even more.
Why else would the New York Daily News have hawkers giving away papers on streetcorners in Manhattan every weekday? The smell of sweaty desperation is getting pretty rank.
Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times, touched on his paper’s troubles in a Q&A with readers online:
[W]e hope and believe the Web site -- whether by selling ads or by selling subscriptions -- will make more money. The long-range future of the NYT, and of quality journalism in general, depends on that. Our newspaper, because of its national market, is in sturdier financial health than many of our competitors, but the cost of everything we do is going up faster than the ad and circulation revenues that support our work. More and more, we will count on our digital journalism to pay a greater share of this amazing news organization.
So I wonder whether Keller saw it as a good thing or a bad one when Jack Shafer had this to say in Slate recently:
I'm Canceling My Times Subscription
Why you should, too.Hello, New York Times? I'd like to cancel my subscription today. No, I'm not protesting your Middle East coverage, your treatment of any ethnic minority or weird religion, and I am certainly not upset about some petty delivery problem. Nor am I angry about the gruesome picture you recently printed on Page One or your deletion of my favorite continuing feature.
I'm canceling because the redesign of your Web site, which you unveiled yesterday, bests the print edition by such a margin I've decided to pocket the annual $621.40 I currently spend on home delivery.
I wonder if Jack is still getting the paper, too. The coupons for toothpaste and cat food continue to be nice, but hauling all these dead trees out to the recycling bin is a pain the ass, and I’m building up some bad karma with the Ents, I suspect. I wonder what I’d have to do to get them to stop sending the paper already...
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