JANUARY
27, 2004 -- I could plead till I am dehydrated and The
New Yorker will be Fortress Media to my beseechments.
When this magazine
sends me letters that include threats, pleas and exhortations,
do I turn my back on
them, and their request that they need me to renew--"Fast Desperately"?
Of course not. And so, at the indirect request of David Remnick, I "put
[my] pen to work with all possible speed" and wrote a check i/a/o $34.95 "which," I
was informed "is only $.76 per copy."
If the people
at The New Yorker were truly
compassionate, the newsstand price would be rather closer to 76 cents than
the list price of $3.95 I think it is. (I would be surer if I read the magazine
more frequently on arrival.) |
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And how
about New York magazine giving me an offer I could not refuse
-- a whopping 88% off the cover price, paying a "preferred
rate" of $15.97, instead of $143.54 to "save $127.57." Still,
why couldn't New York share the savings, in compassion's
name, of course, and come
down a bit from that cover price, bringing more business to our newsstands?
Maybe it
is time for us compassionate subscribers to unite for purpose
of bringing some compassion to the magazines of Fortress
Media (and thanks to Ken Auletta of The New Yorker for inspiring
that term).
Editors,
tear down those cover prices. |
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