Is it considered polite or rude to leave a newspaper behind in public after you’re done with it?
What about different contexts - diners, trains, etc.
I only really questioned the practice after seeing the Sounder trains in Seattle have signs that say to take everything explicitly including newspapers. I imagine it would be a problem for the janitors when hundreds of commuters have the same idea.
I think it depends on context. If you’re at a cafe, coffee house or diner, and you bring a newspaper in, leaving it is considered a perfectly fine thing to do since someone else may want to read it later.
Leaving it anywhere else would require that you ask someone who works there if they are okay with you leaving it since they may not want to have to clean up newspapers.
Questions of etiquette are best handled in IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
One rule of thumb might be generalized seating vs. individual seating.
At a greasy-spoon restaurant, with booths, leaving a newspaper clutters up the seating, and might prompt someone not to sit there. It could be taken as a signal that the customer has gone to the bathroom and is going to come back. Ultimately, a waiter is going to have to remove it.
But at a big airport lobby, with rows of seats or benches, the signal doesn’t work the same way. An unattended newspaper is seen as discarded, and the next guy along can pick it up. (I suppose, in due course, a cleaner will come along and remove it, so the final result is largely the same.)
Trains and busses , it’s fine. The next person can grab the sports section or the crossword. At my usual bar, there’s a corner with left behind newspapers from that day. Airports, also fine, it’s always interesting to see if it’s a paper from Dallas or Dubai. In the community room of my apartment building, there’s often magazines or newspapers.
At a diner, it would probably be tossed as it might be a sign that the person is still there. I’ve seen a few that have a rack that has newspapers to read, but these are kinda rare in the smartphone and iPad era
Several years ago it may have been alright to leave a newspaper for someone else to read in the right locations, but today, “who reads newspapers?”.
I spend a fair amount of time in airports and I see very few people reading newspapers. Everyone is on their laptops, cell phones and tablets. They very well might be reading “news”, but not in the archaic form known as a “newspaper”.
I give newspapers 10 years tops and then they will have gone the way of typewriters, ice boxes and the horse and buggy.
I’ve been reading that papers are going under for a long time now. It might happen because very few young people read the physical paper now. But they may last beyond 10 years.
In the NYC subways, there are probably newspapers I read before I moved away, 20 years ago.
I don’t fly that much, but a few weeks ago I had a Sunday morning flight, so I brought along my (home-delivered) Sunday paper to consume. I then noticed I was the only one reading something on “paper” - as noted, everyone else was reading something electronic.
To be considerate to the gate cleaners, I disposed the paper in the recycling bin. It didn’t look like anyone else would want it.