Marketing genius

Evil marketing genius! Last night a kid stopped by as we were sitting down to dinner to get us to subscribe to the local paper The Gazette. My wife and I have gone around and around trying to figure out whether we should subscribe to a newspaper. When it comes down to it, we feel guilty if we don't read it, so we spend time we would dedicate to other things (for her, schoolwork) trying to allay our consciences over the money we spent on it. But mostly when we subscribed to the Denver paper, it would make a nice stack of newspapers.

So I answer the door. Dude offers me a copy of The Gazette, telling me he's trying help build the subscriber base. If he signs up 50 new subscribers, the paper will pay for a semester at the local community college. He said he was at 47, so I could have helped him get one closer. I applaud programs like this that allow students to get education. But it's sinister in that a big corporation, desperate for a subscriber base to promote to potential advertisers, is willing to use my emotions about the value of education to get me to pony up cash that we need to pay for my wife's education (or insert your own family's need here). We have planned generosity built into our budget from regular monthly support of different organizations to a small discretionary amount for other things that pop up. But I feel bad for other people who are manipulated by the wonderful opportunity of education into paying another chunk of money for something they don't need and won't read. It's a small handful of people who will form a new and enjoyable habit of reading the paper by being convinced to sign up. When they move to a new town, most newspaper readers will call the local paper and sign up if they want it. The vast majority of people who sign up for promotions like this do so out of guilt and get what zefrank calls "a litter version of the internet."

This makes me question the future of newspapers, because our culture will soon reach the critical mass of people who get their newsertainment from other media and don't care to keep using paper. Advertising will drop. Papers will charge more for subscriptions. The generation older than me, which has a higher propensity to read the paper, will go the way of . . . generations. My generation has about ten percent, if that, who intentionally read the paper. Newspapers will probably collapse under the inefficiency. Not that I want that to happen. We're seeing more and more physical media go away. Physical media have great value, but since it is only economics that drive these media, they will probably go away. Not a prediction, a prophecy or a guarantee, but I don't see how the economics will continue to work. Unless someone comes to my doorstep saying, "If you don't subscribe to The Paper, I will kill this kitten."