Twice a week I walk across campus to teach Intro Psych in the Ed College’s large lecture classroom. Each trip I walk down the hallway toward the classroom and I walk past a distribution site for the NY Times. I always notice how many copies are available. Now, understand that I make this trip in the afternoon and the copies of the paper are free for the taking. I don’t know how many copies are available at the beginning of the day, but it always seems to me that a very large number of copies are left.
For some reason I have becone preoccupied with why it takes so long to get rid of free copies of the paper. Perhaps I am interested because I recently wrote a post announcing the availability of free online access to the paper. I guess I do not understand what the NY Times hoped to accomplish by giving away copies of the paper. Perhaps there was an assumption that there was an untapped market in North Dakota and students who got hooked on the paper would purchase it when they leave school. My daily unofficial observation would seem to indicate that a different approach may be required. Perhaps the Times should include a page of local news – something like the USA Today does when it offers a paragraph of news for each state. Of course, I don’t know if students who bother to pick up a free copy of a local paper either. Maybe the digital natives don’t read content in hard copy. I guess that might explain the performance of students on my last exam.
I did learn from my reading of the paper that there is a growing dispute over the unsanctioned use of images posted to Flickr. You don’t have to buy or even pick up a free copy of the paper to read this article – it is available online.
