Should you subscribe to your own publication?

In the last year, our publisher has issued the following memos:

1) Beginning with the next pay period, all employees will subscribe to the paper through payroll deduction. Violation of this directive will result in discipline or discharge.*

2) Employees will pay full subscription price (equal to newsstand price -- the circulation tries to sell the 'convenience' of home delivery vs. buying it on the streets.)

3) "All employees" means all employees, regardless of hours worked.

4) Employees not living within the home delivery area may have the paper delivered to their desks, or elect for mail delivery (at a much higher rate, of course).

5) About two months later: "The circulation manager (who incidentally spends many of his waking hours camping in the publisher's shorts) has reported a high number of 'nuisance complaint calls' from employee subscribers on matters such as missed delivery, late delivery, missed starts/stops, papers thrown in mud, etc etc., taking up much of the circulation staff's valuable time. Accordingly, employee subscribers will not be allowed to make complaint calls by phone -- all complaints should be submitted by e-mail, direct mail, or directly in writing to the circulation department. Continued frivolous complaints or other violation of this directive will result in discipline or discharge." *

6) About a month later: "It has become apparent employees are using the availability of office copies of the newspaper to circumvent the subscription requirement. A limited number (about 25 for the whole newsroom) of office copies will be available for office use. Employees are not to remove these copies or any sections thereof from the office. Violation of this directive will result in discipline or discharge.*

* Of course, the first time you see this in a memo, it scares the crap out of you, but since there's a continually-expanding grocery list of about 938 gadzugillion things you can be summarily dismissed for at our paper, after a while it's not quite so terrifying. But, just to make sure you know they're serious, they have indeed fired a few people over the issue.

 

Wow.

 

I started a new job three weeks ago. Free home delivery for employees. I never subscribed to my own paper before, but I have always been a fairly faithful reader of the papers I've worked at, just waited until I got to work and read based on how busy I was at work, but pretty much always found the time at some point to flip through the paper to keep up on what was going on in each department.

I know in the last three weeks I have read more of my paper - front to back, every section - than I did at any of my previous stops because I get it at home for the first time. I love it.

Not sure I have a point, but employee readership in this instance went up when I got the product delivered to me at home. I have been a more informed employee since. I doubt the bean counters would say that is an equitable trade off at most papers, though.

 

That's quite amazing.

 

That's it. Why bother doing something as simple as a mass e-mail to maybe increase circulation? Don't know how many people are in your shop, but at mine, there's about 100 newsroom employees. Everyone sends an e-mail out to five people (conservative as far as I'm concerned) and says, "Send this to anyone you think might be interested." Sure, not everyone is going to subscribe, but what's it hurt to ask.

That's a bullshit attitude, EStreet. Take some fuckin' pride in your paper, and the industry.


Side note on circ departments: As someone who has delivered numerous routes and worked in circ departments, most the time they are jackasses.
Delivered USA Today for about a year. Noticed three days worth of papers on a porch. Hopped out of my truck, picked 'em up and didn't leave that day's paper.
Went to pick up my route's papers the next day and my boss sez, "Hows come So and So hasn't gotten a paper fer da last fer days?"
"If I would have left yesterday's paper, there would have been four on their porch. I really didn't think they wanted everyone to know they were out of town."
"Oh."
*thinking*"Yeah, go find a taint to lick."

 

That is pretty amazing. Which chain owns the newspaper? Is it one of the big ones?

 

As I said in a later response, all of my friends and family live outside the circulation area, so there's nobody for me to send that mass e-mail to. I'm not going to go hitting up neighbors I don't know, who don't subscribe, to try selling a subscription. About half of the sports staff didn't live in the circulation area so it was pointless for them to send a mass e-mail to family and friends. So a mass e-mail isn't as simple as it sounds so it isn't a bullshit attitude.

 

Really not wanting to get into a flame-tastic thing here ...

I simply side with the MANY on this thread who believe, as oldhack and Rusty_Hampton more eloquently said, it is pride in the product.

As to the point I was trying to make off of your initial thread: We have a graphics editor who prides himself in saving the pennies he does by not subscribing at half-price to our product, and says he proudly reads the paper "at the office the next morning". And then we spend half the day cluing the guy in on what was in the paper -- wasting multiple people's time. As I believe Rusty implied, I take the position that you better know what the hell is going on before you walk in the door.

Forgive me if that is too high a standard.

rb

 

Point taken, Buck. What about your off days?

rb

 

You do what I did...you come in a bit earlier so you have time to catch up.

All this being said, there was virtually nothing that went into my newspaper, in ANY section, which I didn't read prior to it rolling off the press. I proofed our Life section, I proofed sports and I did the damn news. There's no reason for me to waste any amount of money on a subscription for something which I've already read and don't need to read yet again.

But to claim a person has no pride in their product because they don't have a subscription is both insulting and inaccurate.

 

So you read it, Alley. Good for you. I suspect you are in the STRONG minority of those who don't subscribe at your shop. It is the same way here, incidentally.

I go back and forth on whether I should/would make my peeps subscribe. On one hand, I consider it like a Ford worker driving a Honda or a Comcast sales rep buying DirecTV at home. On the other hand, you can't legislate personal choice in the workplace. But I think you CAN require people to have a working knowledge of the product -- which you have. The easiest way I know to do that: Subscribe and read. It beats staying up every night to press run (though that gets my juices flowing something fierce to see ...)

rb

 

You're right in that you can require or strongly encourage your staff to have a working knowledge of the product, and they should.

But you don't necessarily have to subscribe to do that. You can get it online, pick up a copy at the coffee shop or come in 30 minutes early to read it at the office.

The issue seems to be not whether you can get information by subscribing, but if subscribing is the "right" thing to do for your paper or the industry. And you cannot force a consumer to buy a product.