Should you subscribe to your own publication?

I'm pretty sure I've always subscribed to my own paper, often at a discount, but always.

 

It always has escaped me how people in our industry can possibly justify not purchasing their own product.

Always have subscribed -- and read it. Always will. And I rip co-workers who don't. (like that should be a surprise ... )

rb

 

Just another reason why you SHOULD get the paper.

Ten minutes with the Sunday paper will net you several dollars in coupon savings.

For the 23,000th time, with just the tiniest bit of effort, the paper PAYS you.

 

Always surprised? Not sure what's so hard to understand about the fact that if I read the paper every day (at work), why then do I need to spend MORE money to get the same paper sent to me at home? It's just killing more trees.

Do we mandate that people who work at a restaurant also eat there all the time? If they go to a different restaurant, should those same restaurant workers be harassed?

 

Or, I could just take one of the many coupon inserts which were discarded by the press guys and save even more money.

 

Exactly. I should read my paper more thoroughly than I do, but I do check it out either online or when I'm in the office.

 

A waitress who is familiar with her establishment's menu and the way the food is prepared can pass along that knowledge to her customers, who likely will be appreciative and thus will leave her a larger tip.

And someone doing the briefs who is familiar with the paper won't run an item that already appeared a few days earlier. This kind of situation comes up ALL THE TIME.

Nothing is "mandatory", as you put it.

But being familiar with what has been in your product absolutely helps you to do a better job. And unless you're working seven days a week, you're not reading your paper every day at the office.

 

Our ME just sent an e-mail yesterday saying we will be quizzed on the content of our paper. And we already receive free delivery.
So, not sure what sparked this but I look forward to my quiz.

 

No, but I did make it a point to read the papers published during my days off, and I would come in early to allow myself plenty of catchup time long before I started working on the next day's rag.

Again, not a reason in and of itself to have a subscription. Plenty of other ways exist to make sure you stay on top of what's going into the paper.

And if circulation numbers are down, I simply refuse to accept that it's because I don't have a subscription. Entirely too many other factors play into it, the least of which is whether or not I subscribe (and the reader would never know unless some asshat put it into print).

 

Your ME posts here, then, I'm willing to bet!

 

If you worked at GM, and drove a Toyota, I bet you'd catch hell for that too. Also, it isn't like you have hundreds of restaurant-style options to get your local news from. Not subscribing to the paper, to me, is like not voting. Your various bitches about the product mean nothing to me, because you are unwilling to contribute to the solution.

rb

 

At one of my previous stops, subscribing to the paper was mandatory. For a paper with a disgracefully low pay scale for its size, we were all pretty pissed when they added that rule.

Lucky for me, somehow I slipped through and never had to. I continued to pick up my free copies of the paper at the office and read it every day.

I agree that we should definitely be reading our paper. But online or papers off the rack in the office should be more than enough.