For the past several days (maybe weeks--I just noticed it a few days ago) The News and Observer has been running the following ad:
"This Thanksgiving, we are proud to be offering the largest paper of the year filled with holiday sales inserts from all your favorite retailers. In addition, this paper will include a special Decade of Champions section honoring the great success of North Carolina sports teams over the last 10 years. Due to the increased size and value of this edition, the newsstand price will be raised to $2.00 for individual copies of the Thanksgiving paper. Daily subscribers will be charged at their current Sunday rate."
Excuse me? You're filling my paper, not with news or articles of importance to my life, but with advertising? Advertising that you get paid for, and that I pull out immediately to put in the recycling bin that has to be hauled to the curb? You're charging me more for this without my permission? And you're acting like it's some special little gift you're giving your subscribers???
You've got to be kidding.
I have continued to subscribe to my local paper because I believe in the printed news. Even though the paper has gotten thinner and thinner, and the real news rarer and rarer, I have continued to pay the price I paid for the paper of old. But, Mr. Orage Quarles, this is the last straw. I will not pay for you to bulk up my paper with crap and charge me extra for it.
As a first step I'm cancelling the Thursday Thanksgiving special advertising edition. And I'm going to give myself a few more days to think about it. But the way I see it now, the Sunday New York Times has as much news as my local paper puts out all week, and I'm tired of being hoodwinked into paying for something that is really, in the end, a pile of recycling.
3 comments:
Amen, sister. The Atlanta paper is getting just as bad. By the time I throw out the ad circulars, there's almost no paper left.
Hey there Mamie! As a retail sales rep, and a columnist (yay!), I couldn't agree with you more. You can't charge folks more when they are getting less.
How are you? And when are we having a ladies weekend? I miss my writing gals!
We stopped daily papers about a year ago and we haven't really been sorry about it. The only thing I miss is the comics (and I'm not kidding). The Sunday paper is filled with ads that go immediately into the recycle bin. I don't know what the answer is, but I don't see people hanging onto their subscriptions for much longer.
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