Showing posts with label Newspapers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Newspapers. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 8, 2020

Smetimes It Pays To Complain

Well, I've been a loyal subscriber to my local newspaper for 30+ years.  My "local" newspaper is 'The Washington Post'.  Not the average "local" newspaper...

I got a notice of subscription increases.  Mostly because they have started sending out "special editions" on topics I don't care about.  I wasn't subscibing because it was "local", but because it is one of the top newspapers in the the US.  The "local" part was happenstance.

I got tired of paying $5 for subjects like "museums" or "the subway".  I don't actually go to Washington DC anymore, I just happen to live nearby.  So I emailed them (emails are great for keeping records) to cancel.  I would miss the editorials and comics (2 full pages and I love comics strips), but I objected the the $5 special editions (that arrived more frequently lately).

They replied with a 50% discount offer...  Well, that sure makes up for the $5 special issue nonsense!  I accepted.  I got a confirmation email today.

They didn't make it easy.  Their emails were all "no reply" addresses.  Even copying the discount offer wouldn't work.  And the emails even said "just reply to this email".  Businesses are entirely stupid internetly sometimes...

I had to do a copy to Word, "forward" the email and copy the relevant part (offering the discount), and then add text to say I was ACCEPTING their offer.  Sent it. 

They may STILL be wondering how I did that...  LOL!

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Newspaper Reading

I love newspapers.  And I am lucky that my "local" newspaper is The Washington Post.  So I get local and national news articles.  I love the editorials, science articles, political articles, and comics the best. 

But I got to the point where I wasn't reading the new newspaper every day.  When I got 3 months behind, I cancelled my subscription.  Kept reading the older papers of course. 

It was actually very interesting.  I could completely ignore the sports section as being old and the local news was outdated.  The comics were fine; few of them are topical. 

The editorials became hilarious!  You never realize how silly most columnists and editorials are until you read them after their predictions are made.  I was reading liberal and conservative ideas about what Trump would do in his first 100 days after the first 100 days.  None were right.  Well, some were, and those people were right very often!  It is a good way to decide who to pay attention to.

Looking back, what some of the columnists suggested would happen and knowing what DID happen was great reading.  George Will (conservative) was right about a lot, so was E J Dionne (liberal).  Charles Krauthammer was nearly almost always wrong.

I missed some of the comics that had story arcs.  But they aren't my favorites.  I find it pretty hard to care about those "soap opera" ones like Judge Parker. 

I missed the Style Invitational contest feature.  That suggests weird contests in the Sunday paper like writing haikus about current events, combining Kentucky race horse names together for humor, and creating puns by rearranging letters in Post headlines for anagrams and the like.  I entered the contests in the past and got mentioned twice.

For a first entry printed, you get one of those pine tree air fresheners.  Its your "first ink" (fir stink, get it?)

But reading old papers, I couldn't enter because of the deadlines.  Now I have new papers and can enter again hurray.

"There was a time when
I was gone but now I'm back
Never win again."

LOL!

But now I know which columnists to pay more attention to.

Early Flowers

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