The Dallas Morning News must be hurting for subscriptions, if they’re resorting to reminding their readers they’re paying $4 a gallon at the pumps as a marketing hook. Today I received an email sporting the following subject line: “Save gas, have news delivered to you!”
Since when has saving gas been the straw that broke the camel’s back when it comes to making a decision about whether to subscribe to a paper or not? Who drives to go get a newspaper? Haven’t paperboys been around for, like, ever? Aren’t there newsstands within walking distance of anywhere you might get a hankering to do the daily commuter crossword? If I’m not mistaken, most newspapers nowadays aren’t delivered by bike-riding schoolboys, but but people driving cars — which run on gas. Not that most people are terribly concerned about how much money The Dallas Morning News loses to gas. But you’d think that if they’re concerned that the rising cost of gas might be responsible for their lower subscription rates and thus their lower profits, they’d want to cut their own gas costs by making fewer deliveries. They might suggest reading their news online…
Of course, I imagine internet news is a lot of the circulation problem.
11/07/2008 at 10:09 pm Permalink
That’s funny! You should send this to The DMN!!! See you tomorrow night.