Last month, Starbucks announced and followed through with plans to end selling print editions of The WSJ, The NYT, and the local newspapers (which pretty much means the death knell of newsprint).
They did this, I am told by the local manager, because "no bought" these newspapers any more. They read them, but they didn't buy them. They would take them off the newsstand, read them, and then return them to the newsstand.
But Howard Schultz didn't want to "punish" everyone for the few that abused the system. So, now we see this:
By the way, this also suggests that those "rumors" that Starbucks didn't want to encourage folks from sitting too long in their coffee shops were entirely wrong. If Starbucks doesn't want to encourage folks hanging out at Starbucks all day long, would they offer:
- comfy chairs?
- fast, unlimited wi-fi?
- almost-free refills?
- no questions asked even if you don't buy anything?
- no questions asked even if you only order free ice water and hang around all day?
- unlimited access to digital Baltimore Sun?
- free, unlimited access to non-gender-designated rest rooms?
- pretty good coffee at steep prices?
nothing onlne can replace the tactile feel and experience of reading a paper page by page. Shame on them for removing the NYT! Boycott the machine.
ReplyDeleteI prefer the printed copy for relaxed reading, but the printed edition has even bigger benefits than the tactile feel and experience (as important as that is). The most important aspect of a printed newspaper: the relative importance of an article by its placement in the newspaper; the size of the headline; etc. We get none of that in the digital edition. A "nothing" story gets the same "billing" as an important story.
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