October 2006 Archives
How much does newspaper home delivery cost?
Here's a challenge for those who consider themselves web-savvy: tell me the weekly home delivery rates for the New York Times. If you can't do that, then give me the weekly home delivery rates for any other newspaper, along with a link to the page where they're listed.
I have something of an advantage, in that I already get home delivery of the New York Times, which means that I have a login to various bits of the website which require a username and password to see. But still I can't find a page anywhere with the rates on it. Of course, it's easy to find introductory rates for the first 12 weeks of a subscription, but there's no indication of what the rates will be thereafter.
The only page I can find is this one, which tells us that home delivery rates went up from $4.25 per week in 1989 to $4.50 per week in 1990. Using the Minneapolis Fed's inflation calculator, we can determine that $4.50 in 1990 is equivalent, in real terms, to $6.97 today. On the other hand, in 1990 the New York Times had much less competition, and no one was getting their news off the internet for free – which meant that the Times could basically, as a monopoly, charge whatever it wanted. Today, anybody who gives up a subscription can get 95% of the same content for free, and the other 5% for $49.95 per year, or just under a dollar per week. So one might expect that the price of home delivery would have gone down.
But one would be wrong. It hasn't gone down in nominal terms, and it hasn't gone down even in real terms. In fact, according to a slip of paper which fell out of my newspaper today, the price for weekly delivery of the New York Times is now going up to $9.90 – which works out to $515 per year. That's an increase of 42%, in real terms, since 1990.
Obviously, the Times is a little bit embarrassed by this, since it reveals its rates nowhere on its website. $515 per year is a lot of money, and I think that many Times subscribers might be shocked at how much they're paying on an annual basis, if they ever bothered to work it out. (One cute little trick the Times has which makes the rate seem a little cheaper: it bills every four weeks, rather than every month.) But I have a more theoretical question, now that I'm a professional econoblogger: what kind of economic theory would predict rising real prices in a period of vastly increased competition?
Posted by Felix at 12:43 EST | Comments (11)
Lying to friends for money
Jason Calacanis is always good for a laugh:
Jason Calacanis, September 18:
Nice knowing you YouTube.
YouTube is the new Napster and their fate will be the same.
I don't think any of the big media companies are desperate enough for YouTube's traffic to buy their company/impending lawsuits and collapse.
In fact, if someone at the company I worked for made a run at YouTube I would fight it to my last dying breath for a) our shareholders and b) the fact that there is no long-term business model stealing people's content. I know executives from the other big media/Internet companies and they have a similar "hell no!" approach to acquiring YouTube. That's why you see everyone making their own syndicated video services--we all know that YouTube is on the brink of extinction.Google to buy YouTube? Perfect match.
This makes total sense to me for a number of reasons:
Congrats to everyone involved... this deal makes total sense.
But sometimes he really does makes sense:
Why PayPerPost, their investors, and their advertisers should be ashamed of themselves.
The fact is no one in the world--NO ONE--wants to be covertly marketed to. Add to that the fact that PayPerPost enables people you consider your friends--or who you thought were your friends--to covertly market to you for profit. That's really evil in my book.
Jason, here, really puts his finger on something which has been bothering me for a couple of months. You see, on July 17, I got an email from a friend of mine – let's call her E. The subject line was "hot new blog!" and this is what it said, along with a couple of photos:
http://thatgirlemily.blogspot.com/
I found the craziest, funniest (& saddest) blog! This woman, Emily finds out her husband's cheating on her with her best friend... you HAVE TO read the previous blogs she wrote to catch up--it takes all of 10 min. to read ...
And now she's put up a BILLBOARD in NYC! She's off her rocker -- check it out:Her blog site:
http://thatgirlemily.blogspot.com/
Pass it on!
I replied:
I reckon it's fake. But tell me: How did you find this blog?
And she wrote back:
it was forwarded to me...
So I wrote a blog entry about That Girl Emily, helping to give it whatever buzz an entry on felixsalmon.com is worth.
It didn't take long for the blog and its associated billboards to be outed as a cheap publicity stunt for a TV series. But it took a little bit longer for my friend E to out herself as the author of the blog.
Let's go back to what Calacanis said: No one wants to be covertly marketed to, and it's "really evil" when "friends--or people you thought were your friends-- covertly market to you for profit".
E was anything but transparent about her covert marketing email, and when I pressed her on it she lied outright for the sake of her covert marketing strategy – something for which, she later assured me, she was very handsomely paid.
I felt betrayed, and I think now I understand why. It's one thing to write a fake blog for money; it's another thing to abuse your personal relationships with your friends by lying to them for your paymasters' sake – especially when your friends are bloggers with a high Google PageRank and thousands of visitors per day. Essentially, I was conned by the author of a marketing campaign into turning my blog into valuable publicity for that campaign. Maybe E thought it was all a big joke, but I didn't find it very funny.
If friends of mine send me stuff, and I double-check with them, I will take them at face value. And if they lie to me, I'm not going to see the joke. Calacanis is right that Pay Per Post is exactly the same. If bloggers I trust write something enthusiastic about a product and don't disclose that they're being paid to do so, that's an abuse of trust and a lie, and I will feel betrayed by them and I will not understand.
Posted by Felix at 22:13 EST | Comments (4)
Amanda Gillespie Rules OK!
I spent a large chunk of the day today waiting in various rooms in a large office building in Garden City, Long Island. It was all worth it in the end, though, because I left said building with a green card. (Or at least a stamp in my passport which says that I'm getting a conditional green card.) Oh happy day!
To my enormous surprise, the entire process, from application to approval, took only a little over six months – everybody else I know who's gone through it spent years, and my good friends Alex and Amy still don't have their green card, despite applying in 2002! So something, somewhere, has become much more efficient than it used to be.
My friends Mimi and Elliott were incredibly helpful in this process, as were various other people including the Lawyer Crowd: Alison, Rosalind, Seda, Lucy – thank you all very, very much for your help, advice and guidance along the way. But for anybody else who's thinking of applying for a green card or any other visa (especially O visas), I just have two words for you: Amanda Gillespie. Amanda is some kind of immigration genius, and she's also an incredibly friendly and helpful person who deserves an enormous amount of credit for the successful outcome of my case. Amanda, you're the best, and I can't recommend you highly enough!
I also have a request for readers of this blog. It turns out I only have a conditional green card, and that I have to file something called an I-751 90 days before my conditional green card expires in 2 years' time. Says the piece of paper I got given today:
If the petition to remove the conditional basis of your status is not filed within 90 day period, your Conditional permanent residence status will be terminated automatically and you will be subject to Deportation from the United States.
NOTE: The Service will not contact you in regard to the above, and It will be your sole responsibility to comply with the above Regulation.
What that all means is that on or after July 4, 2008, I have to remember to file an I-751. So I'd appreciate an email on July 3, 2008, reminding me to do that! Thanks!
Posted by Felix at 21:12 EST | Comments (3)
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