Want to cancel your subscription? Let me put you on hold.

That makes sense to me. When I lived in a two-newspaper town, the feel was so distinct and the differences so apparent that switching from one to the other would have been like changing allegiances from the Yankees to the Mets or something.

It wasn't individual writers, who jumped back and forth. It was the mindset and everything you cited. That's what was lost.

 

I've been a Sunday-only subscriber to my large daily metro here in Central Florida for a couple of years. Three weeks ago a charming lady from their circulation department called to thank me for my business and, as a way to show its appreciation, it was adding a Wednesday and Friday paper to my service at no additional charge. Two Wednesdays and Fridays have come and gone since then and the driveway is still empty.

 

I seriously doubt that's an official policy. Just sounds like they don't have any staff in the office to take the calls. Poor customer service sure, but poor reporting by Gawker as well. I don't see one attempt by Gawker to fact check this person's claims. Yes they seem to have documentation of all this, but wouldn't it have been nice for the blogger to call an editor for comment or something before printing this? These are pretty salacious allegations. Oh wait, it's the future of journalism!

 

Fact check? On the Interweb? Horrors!

 

I think this is common practice. I've heard of a more than a few papers that do this. Funny thing, about 10 years ago the much talked about Denver Post did this to me. Then they tried to get money for the papers they sent me after the subscription ended. A good bitching them out over the phone ended the issue. Now I'm sort of surprised they didn't send it to collection. I think circ departments are kind of shady in general and always have been.