Newspaper randomly arrives at my door. I don't subscribe

[TheFugitive]

It's been close to twenty years since I've subscribed to a dead tree newspaper.  Locally here the Post-Gazette only publishes two days per week.  The rest of the time they are online only.  Their writing staff has been on strike for over a year, and the paper recently announced that they are closing their main printing plant.

So imagine my surprise this morning when the day before Thanksgiving the P-G is delivered to my door, despite the fact that I've neither subscribed nor paid for it.

It is of course the Black Friday edition that has all of the ads from retailers for their Black Friday sales.

Putting 2 and 2 together, I'd guess that the circulation numbers on the P-G have dropped so low that they were in danger of having major retailers decide to forego inserting their ads.  So in order to keep that business they agreed to get today's edition into the hands of a certain number of people, be they subscribers or not.

I still remember my last Black Friday in retail where I had to be the one to break it to my Hills District Manager that the P-G had failed to insert the Hills flyer into the Thanksgiving edition.  I thought he was going to lay down behind our registers and cry.

The main thing I notice since the last time I subscribed are that the paper overall is much thinner, and the writing is actually terrible (it contains a number of grammatical errors among other things).  Since their main writers are on-strike I am guessing they are using interns or possibly even AI to write this stuff.

[BillyGr]

It's been close to twenty years since I've subscribed to a dead tree newspaper.  Locally here the Post-Gazette only publishes two days per week.  The rest of the time they are online only.  Their writing staff has been on strike for over a year, and the paper recently announced that they are closing their main printing plant.

So imagine my surprise this morning when the day before Thanksgiving the P-G is delivered to my door, despite the fact that I've neither subscribed nor paid for it.

It is of course the Black Friday edition that has all of the ads from retailers for their Black Friday sales.

Putting 2 and 2 together, I'd guess that the circulation numbers on the P-G have dropped so low that they were in danger of having major retailers decide to forego inserting their ads.  So in order to keep that business they agreed to get today's edition into the hands of a certain number of people, be they subscribers or not.

I still remember my last Black Friday in retail where I had to be the one to break it to my Hills District Manager that the P-G had failed to insert the Hills flyer into the Thanksgiving edition.  I thought he was going to lay down behind our registers and cry.

The main thing I notice since the last time I subscribed are that the paper overall is much thinner, and the writing is actually terrible (it contains a number of grammatical errors among other things).  Since their main writers are on-strike I am guessing they are using interns or possibly even AI to write this stuff.

Around this area, the more local paper puts an "ad pack" in the mail each week (with the ads for the three supermarket chains and sometimes others like Ollies or Ocean State).

In another area not too far away, the main paper there throws a bag with similar ads on people's steps/sidewalk (that would be harder here as most homes are farther from the road).

It certainly makes sense that would be done to increase the distribution of the ads to more than those who still get papers.

[TheFugitive]

Around this area, the more local paper puts an "ad pack" in the mail each week (with the ads for the three supermarket chains and sometimes others like Ollies or Ocean State).

In another area not too far away, the main paper there throws a bag with similar ads on people's steps/sidewalk (that would be harder here as most homes are farther from the road).

It certainly makes sense that would be done to increase the distribution of the ads to more than those who still get papers.

One of the biggest victims of the so-called Retail Apocalypse has been newspapers.
Go online and look at a microfiche copy from 25+ years ago and you'll see that it was packed with ads from store chains which are no longer around.  Just as how malls can no longer fill all of their space with retailers as there are no longer enough chains around to do that, there is no good way for newspapers to recoup that lost revenue.

Combine that with Craigslist sniping all of their classified ad revenue and it's been a double-whammy for them.

I went to high-school with a guy who worked as a columnist for decades at a major metropolitan daily paper.  He was laid-off a few years ago, and from what I hear he's been really scraping by ever since.