Bury His Money In The Old Sink Hole
By As a follow-up to Eric Boehlert’s mockery of Hugh Hewitt’s claim that big-city newspaper circulation is declining because they don’t offer the reactionary hackery that readers crave, let’s consider an even better example, the high comedy that is the New York Sun:
The New York Sun has launched an aggressive new tactic in order to boost its free distribution in the City’s elite neighborhoods, but many of the freebies are unwanted, reports the New York Post. The paper abandoned its strategy of developing a paid subscriber base in January, and has adopted a plan to distribute 105,000 copies a day, the majority of which are free. The paper can still be bought at newsstands.
The New York Sun took a voluntary suspension from the Audit Bureau of Circulations after having stalled at around 45,000 copies, according to the article. It has since moved to another auditing agency that tracks free papers such as the Village Voice.
New York’s other free dailies, amNew York and Metro, add to the fierce newspaper competition in New York, but were not the motivation for the Sun to move to largely free circulation in January, said the new vp of circulation, August Fields.
The paper is gambling with free circulation, hoping that advertisers will come aboard as circulation rises and that readers, after having received the paper for free for three months, will pay to receive it thereafter. [Yes, and they’ll throw in a free pony with their payments!–ed.]
According to Gawker, however, reports are flooding in from people who don’t wish to receive the paper, free or otherwise.
Yeah, if the New York Times would just turn its op-ed pages over to Jonah Goldberg they’d soon be able to build a solid gold building on West 43rd…