Susie-Q&A

• Aug. 13, 2009 - No, Thank You

This week I got a "Special Offer for Sunday-Only Subscribers" from the Washington Post. I returned it, without any of the offers checked and with this note:

My interest in the Sunday Post extends only as far as the coupon inserts. The rest of the paper goes straight to garden mulch. (But it makes an excellent mulch.) A little balance in your reporting might restore my interest. Thanks!

A (reluctant) subscriber

I'm sure they'll just round-file it, but it felt good.

Comments

• Aug. 13, 2009 - Untitled Comment

Posted by Anonymous

Great note! Don't the newspapers realize why they are going out of business?

Violin Mom in FLA
http://violinkids.blogspot.com

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• Aug. 13, 2009 - LOL

Posted by Anonymous

maybe I should talk to DH about a subscription. We never considered it as a way to get mulching.

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• Aug. 13, 2009 - :)

Posted by CarpeBanana

whoops. Forgot to log in.

Edited by CarpeBanana on Aug. 13, 2009 at 2:56 PM

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• Aug. 13, 2009 - I'll admit....

Posted by Leslie

the Post is one of the newspapers I read - but I rarely read the front page. I tend to focus on the metro and business sections. I do scan the headlines to see what is happening, but don't have the time to delve into the articles. Their reporting in the Metro sections - unless it is close to the elections - tends to be reasonably balanced. Business - well, it is just business news - hard to be biased one way or another there.

As for the Sunday Post - I love the Magazine! The travel section gets me dreaming. The Friday Weekend section often has some good suggestions of fun (and FREE) things to do with the kids - but I read that online.

Happy mulching!

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• Aug. 13, 2009 - I confess to having read the magazine...

Posted by SusannahCox

...and a few of those articles were good. There was a good one from a reporter embedded in Afghanistan a while back. There was a gut-wrenching article once on people who had accidentally left their babies in cars and suffocated them. Horrible. But still, I thought it was good because it wasn't judgmental and showed their anguish over it. The personal retrospectives and fiction generally leave me cold because the values on display are so different from mine. The dating thing bugs me, for some reason, and the restaurant reviews do not interest me as they are out of reach geographically and budget-wise anyway. The hissy fit Gene W. threw the other week sort of killed whatever interest I had and I started tossing it (and I don't like his practical jokes on customer service reps). I used to read through the sections of the newspaper. But besides the front page, much of the coverage seems annoyingly frivolous or unhelpful or irrelevant. I mean, how many retrospectives on Woodstock or Madonna do we need? I can get national and international headlines online, and in fact, I've probably read more Post articles online than on dead-tree. Yeah, without subscribers, the paper won't be online either, but I trust the market to come up with online alternatives to the old guard....

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• Aug. 13, 2009 - A lady after my own heart

Posted by Anonymous

That sounds like something I would do. I wish you lived closer. We could team up and really give people problems :)

Jennifer King

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• Aug. 14, 2009 - Hilarity from the Post Magazine

Posted by SusannahCox

I remembered reading this editorial a few months back and I still get a good chuckle out of it... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/16/AR2009011602399.html?sub=AR I think I'm definitely not in the WaPo's target audience. LOL!

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• Aug. 14, 2009 - Gene W.

Posted by Leslie

I rarely, if ever, read Gene W. - There was one a couple months ago about a car that had over a million miles on it - that was funny. I don't get his humor. Dave Barry - who used to write the column was hilarious. He poked fun at all things political.

I think my favorite columns in the Mag are Making It, First Person Singular, and Editor's Query. They are short, rarely get into ethical issues, and generally interesting. The in-depth articles are often thought-provoking. I save the magazine to read when the munchkins have gone to bed and I can focus for longer than 10 minutes. :)

Miss you guys - drop me a line and let's try to get together.

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