Extra! Extra! Read all about it!
So, Boston has just been blessed with a new newspaper, courtesy of Metro International.
This is like “USA Today for ADD”! It’s a free paper, and it’s only 16 pages long. Perfect for your morning commute on the train, but not really enough to give you more that the newsfeed headlines.
The original idea behind this paper was to leave it behind on subways and trains — the next commuter can pick it up and then leave it again.
Well, that’s not how we do it here in Boston!
I guess that there was a bunch of problems with the “litter” idea, so to make sure they could distribute the 175K copies a day, Metro decided to have the papers handed out to people as they enter the train stations.
So, today, I’m walking down the street, no where near a train station, and there are two of the most pathetic, punk-ass, wanna-be goth, indie-rock, art school dropouts standing in the middle of the sidewalk, handing out Metros! They sure were trying…getting in people’s faces, reading the headlines, doing everything short of sitting the papers in people’s hands and bags. And when one finished handing out their pile, they walked over to the Metro newsbox — the FREE Metro newsbox — and grabbed another stack, and started all over.
So, we have two of the scariest people you’ve ever met, getting paid maybe minimum wage, handing out FREE papers that are readily available to anyone walking down the street. I mean, all a person has to do is say to themselves “hey, I need to know that’s going on in the world. I should get a paper”. That’s the great thing about people — most people, that is — when they have a need, they’ll satisfy it in some way!
So, back to the two hawkers on the street. They’re not too smart…instead of playing old “you get those people from that direction, and I’ll get these people from this direction” they’re running around like chickens with their heads cut off, trying to give papers to everyone, including the people that just rejected the paper from the other hawker!
The point is…and there always is one…a free box of newspapers plus two people attacking folks with news equals garbage cans in either direction full of Metros! In the end, it doesn’t matter if anyone reads the 175K copies, as long as they don’t sit in the newsboxes, right? What is this, the internet!?