02-26-08 Trash Delivery
I gotta tell ya: this post over on Volcano Boy today is right up my rant'n'raving alley!
It all began one winter when I was snowblowing my driveway and suddenly a blizzard of shredded newspaper came flying out the chute! That spring, I had an interesting day's work, wherein the papier mache all over my yard had finally dried sufficiently to collect and dispose of.
The next point in this saga occured a couple of years later when I discovered a soggy old newspaper lying out there beside my shed, underneath the picnic table. Loosely enfolded in an unsealed plastic bag, it wasn't too hard to get rid of. But it reminded me of the papier mache blizzard...
The third time was the charm, however, when I started finding free samples of the Worcester Telegram and Gazette tossed into various random spots in my yard. At that point, I wrote an e-mail to the T&G complaining of the litter, and cc'd it to everyone I could find on their website that might stand some chance of actually being able to put a stop to it.
To make a long story only slightly shorter, I ended up in a back and forth e-mail exchange with Bruce Bennett, then publisher of the T&G, wherein (among many other things) I insisted that getting a "free newspaper" carelessly tossed into my yard was nothing more than unlawful littering. Anybody else, I pointed out, would AT LEAST make an effort to ensure that the advertising material was either lodged inside my storm door, tucked into the door handle, or otherwise secured against blowing all over my yard. Many of these types of advertising materials that I've received over the years are even prepared specifically to be hung on a doorknob, for instance. But apparently, the T&G felt it was perfectly okay to do their own unique style of "drive-by littering".
I even had phone messages from this guy on my answering machine during this interchange.
The one thing I wanted was for this littering to stop. But for some bizarre reason, it turned into a long and increasingly frustrating exchange that escalated into my condemning the entire newspaper industry, and the T&G in particular, for laboring under the delusion that their product was so valuable that anybody would simply JUMP at the chance to get a free copy! The guy actually thought that this refuse, carelessly tossed into my yard, represented a gift of great value!
HA!
But my ill will towards the T&G actually goes back much further than that. We once subscribed to the T&G. For a few years, the delivery service was good. Then it started getting erratic. Some days, we wouldn't get the paper. It happened more and more often as time went on. But the end of the subscription came to us one day in the form of a man at my door one morning who, for all the world, was the spitting image of Charles Manson. He claimed that he was the newspaper deliver guy, and that we hadn't paid him for several weeks.
My immediate response to him was, "Well, that's it, then. My subscription to the paper ends here. Do not set foot on my property again, or I'll call the police." And I just stood there looking at him for several seconds until he turned around and walked away.
So... that's the extent of my emotional baggage as regards the T&G. It's just the result of a series of minor, but negative experiences. Objectively, I think the paper is sorta-kinda okay. It has one glaring problem, though. It's not locally owned.
If the T&G was still locally owned, at least we'd know whose side they're on. The out of town corporations that have owned the T&G since the Stoddard name disappeared have merely been like vampires... and the lifeblood of our local city daily has slowly, carefully and artfully, been sucked out ever since. The only thing that keeps this paper alive is the local talent. I admire them greatly for their literary talent and their tenacity for hanging on in that milieu of having an out of town corporation, at the core merely a collection of beady-eyed accountants, demanding a ransom for their souls in ever increasing increments, day after day, week after week, year after year.
One can never fully understand what an abusive relationship is until one has completely separated oneself from it.
It all began one winter when I was snowblowing my driveway and suddenly a blizzard of shredded newspaper came flying out the chute! That spring, I had an interesting day's work, wherein the papier mache all over my yard had finally dried sufficiently to collect and dispose of.
The next point in this saga occured a couple of years later when I discovered a soggy old newspaper lying out there beside my shed, underneath the picnic table. Loosely enfolded in an unsealed plastic bag, it wasn't too hard to get rid of. But it reminded me of the papier mache blizzard...
The third time was the charm, however, when I started finding free samples of the Worcester Telegram and Gazette tossed into various random spots in my yard. At that point, I wrote an e-mail to the T&G complaining of the litter, and cc'd it to everyone I could find on their website that might stand some chance of actually being able to put a stop to it.
To make a long story only slightly shorter, I ended up in a back and forth e-mail exchange with Bruce Bennett, then publisher of the T&G, wherein (among many other things) I insisted that getting a "free newspaper" carelessly tossed into my yard was nothing more than unlawful littering. Anybody else, I pointed out, would AT LEAST make an effort to ensure that the advertising material was either lodged inside my storm door, tucked into the door handle, or otherwise secured against blowing all over my yard. Many of these types of advertising materials that I've received over the years are even prepared specifically to be hung on a doorknob, for instance. But apparently, the T&G felt it was perfectly okay to do their own unique style of "drive-by littering".
I even had phone messages from this guy on my answering machine during this interchange.
The one thing I wanted was for this littering to stop. But for some bizarre reason, it turned into a long and increasingly frustrating exchange that escalated into my condemning the entire newspaper industry, and the T&G in particular, for laboring under the delusion that their product was so valuable that anybody would simply JUMP at the chance to get a free copy! The guy actually thought that this refuse, carelessly tossed into my yard, represented a gift of great value!
HA!
But my ill will towards the T&G actually goes back much further than that. We once subscribed to the T&G. For a few years, the delivery service was good. Then it started getting erratic. Some days, we wouldn't get the paper. It happened more and more often as time went on. But the end of the subscription came to us one day in the form of a man at my door one morning who, for all the world, was the spitting image of Charles Manson. He claimed that he was the newspaper deliver guy, and that we hadn't paid him for several weeks.
My immediate response to him was, "Well, that's it, then. My subscription to the paper ends here. Do not set foot on my property again, or I'll call the police." And I just stood there looking at him for several seconds until he turned around and walked away.
So... that's the extent of my emotional baggage as regards the T&G. It's just the result of a series of minor, but negative experiences. Objectively, I think the paper is sorta-kinda okay. It has one glaring problem, though. It's not locally owned.
If the T&G was still locally owned, at least we'd know whose side they're on. The out of town corporations that have owned the T&G since the Stoddard name disappeared have merely been like vampires... and the lifeblood of our local city daily has slowly, carefully and artfully, been sucked out ever since. The only thing that keeps this paper alive is the local talent. I admire them greatly for their literary talent and their tenacity for hanging on in that milieu of having an out of town corporation, at the core merely a collection of beady-eyed accountants, demanding a ransom for their souls in ever increasing increments, day after day, week after week, year after year.
One can never fully understand what an abusive relationship is until one has completely separated oneself from it.
posted by Jeff Barnard at 6:43 PM
2 Comments:
Jeff, my favorite T&G story from 10 or so years ago is also my favorite one-man protest story.
I was living in a dorm building between Elm Park and Pleasant. There were 6 apartments there, but I was the only resident in the entire building when summer would come. That's when the T&G started dropping their little baggies.
I wrote a letter, I called, I called again, but I kept getting 6 of these deposited in front of my house.
Finally fed up, I collected two dozen or so, attached one last "Please Remove Me" note to one of them and went down to Franklin St.
I cannot adequately express the relief and joy I felt walking into their front lobby and just tossing my entire bundle into the air and watching them all rain down.
They just looked at me, I smiled and left. The papers stopped coming.
Kevin Ksen
Part of it is marketing. The sales department tells it's advertisers that the circulation is 'this many papers in circulation'. This number includes the papers tossed in the yards. Advertisers looking to get the widest coverage for their ads think they're getting to this many people. Down here in southwest Florida I live on an island with 6000 residents year round. The corporate newspapers throw papers in the yards saying their circulation is 18,000. When you see the number of papers piling up in the yards of empty houses you begin to realize the circulation isn't the number of readers, but rather the number of newspapers printed. It's a sales scam. Advertisers beware!
Your sister's old man
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