Can’t give ‘em away
Papers in the area have been giving away copies lately, covered in a wrapper from Rutgers University sports (which troubles me and makes me wonder whether we are spending our tax dollars to support this sweat or whether this is money that should be going into educating our state… but I digress). In New York, they’ve been giving away copies of one of the tabs — but I see most people passing by, not wanting it. And in New Jersey, they’ve been throwing free copies of the statewide paper onto driveways with that Rutgers wrapper. This morning as I went on what I charitably call my run, I saw house after house — six in a row on one block — with days-old free copies of that paper still sitting on the driveway, getting wet and run over. People won’t pick them up even when they’re delivered and free.
Tags: newspapers
September 25th, 2006 at 6:22 am
Here in Northern Virginia the Washington Post is constantly at the local supermarket chain giving away the npewsaper. Interested people can just take the newspaper if they want. However, the people giving the newspapers out are also trying to sell subscriptions. The deal usually is buy Sunday and get the rest of the week free for 26 weeks. I’ve only seen one person signing up. Nobody wants a newspaper anymore.
September 25th, 2006 at 9:45 am
I don’t subscribe to a newspaper anymore. I still get the LA Times delivered free on Friday, Sat & Sun. Apparently they think someone with a weekend sub still lives there, though it has been almost a year since I moved in.
I called to try to cancel my nonexistent subscription, since I am often gone on weekends and don’t like to advertise to passing criminals that I am not home.
They were puzzled each of the three times I called to try and do this. I have no sub but I need to cancel. Yes, that is the case. I do not want papers, even if they are free.
The papers keep coming.
September 25th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
Interesting to read the comments about Washington Post and LA Times.
Whereas in the Hong Kong market, people still buy newspapers (very few people actually have subscriptions, people just buy the papers off news stands). I’ve heard, indirectly, that a newspaper tycoon in Hong Kong (owner of Apple Daily in HK) doesn’t believe in the value of free newspapers (which are growing like crazy in HK).
I think he doesn’t believe in the effectiveness of the ads in those newspapers. Since people don’t pay for it, they don’t value it. And worst, paper-recyclers try to get these free papers by cart loads and try to sell them for recycling. Ah, only in Hong Kong.
September 25th, 2006 at 1:35 pm
Here where I work at the University of Massachusetts the taxpayers buy the students free papers (Boston Globe, New York Times and Springfield Republican) under the theory that every educated person should read a newspaper everyday. The papers are available at no cost in the Student Union.
But you can’t force the kids to take them, let alone read them, and big piles are left over everyday. Even for free, most students have no interest in them. It isn’t apathy, this is one of the nation’s most politically active campuses. They just don’t get their news from newspapers.
September 25th, 2006 at 3:48 pm
This eludes to an interesting characteristic of newspapers I have observed as a financial analyst at a major state-wide newspaper: subscribers are generally insensitive to newspaper subscription price while non-subscribers are generally very senstive to price.
I think the newspaper is a good similar to whole milk whereby the price of acquisition is low while the price of consumption is high. What I mean by that is a consumer faces a very low price for milk relative to his income. But consuming that milk has other costs in terms of health and beauty since it is so high in fat. The newspaper is a very inexpensive source of information in terms of the subscription price (leading to price inelasticity in the technical jargon), but reading it requires a large amount of the consumer’s time (leading to price elasticity). In this sense newspapers have a very limited ability to change the quantity demanded by changing the price (up or down).
September 25th, 2006 at 4:26 pm
[...] On local papers, Jeff Jarvis says you can't give 'em away anymore. ("People won’t pick them up even when they’re delivered and free.") And in an earlier post commenting on the L.A. Times/Tribune Co. fiasco, he cautions: To those who celebrate that some newspapers will be freed from the yoke of remote corporate parents as they are bought up by local egotists, beware: New cash from would-be moguls and kingmakers in local markets will only stave off the inevitable. To those who want to regulate big media into extinction: Relax[*]. They will die of their own weight. [...]
September 25th, 2006 at 5:10 pm
[...] BuzzMachine noticed that too in New Jersey. « Was Clinton “sandbagged”? [...]
September 25th, 2006 at 6:43 pm
you and your blog gang must go to every house and force people to read the paper … even the boring parts.
September 25th, 2006 at 10:57 pm
I grew up in a newspaper household-my Dad was an editor on the NY Journal-American, and from the time I was 9 or 10, I was going through 3 or 4 newspapers a day. I went on to a newspaper career for more than 20 years. That said, I can barely stomach them now. It seems that the papers are full of cheap-shot gotcha stories, or they’re obsessing over the latest celebrity embarassment. In many cases, the coverage is not fair or balanced. Even 3 years after the Jayson Blair fiasco, the NYTimes and other mainstream papers and wire services are being caught making stuff up. In their arrogance, they refuse to acknowlege their mistakes. Why should I continually go back and do business with people who lie to me on a regular basis?
September 25th, 2006 at 11:10 pm
I’ve seen both the Post and the Daily News being given away around NYC’s Union Square.
Even if relatively few people don’t grab the free papers, lots of people still see the special front pages, so it might still be a sort-of good way of advertising.
I’d be interested to see if Crunch and FreshDirect (two of the “underwriters” I’ve noticed) think it’s been a good way of advertising in the long run.
September 26th, 2006 at 6:41 pm
Hey, I live next to Greg Schiano (Rutgers football coach) and even he doesn’t pick up his free copies of the newspapers. We are doing our part here: we get three papers a day, and would get five if we had the time to read them or didn’t have to recycle them every two weeks. Perhaps newspapers biodegrade more effectively and more quickly in peoples’ driveways?
September 27th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
SueBob: Inform them you will be filing a complaint against them for throwing trash on private property.