I had gotten accustomed to the fact that wherever I was in the US I could find the NY Times at the nearest Starbucks. So I am visiting my son in a Boston suburb and walked over this morning to the local Starbucks only to find that the entire company has stopped carrying newspapers. I did finally find one at a drugstore but that is hit and miss.
From an ABC report: *The coffee-chain says it is gradually reducing non-core products and items people are not buying, like CD’s.
The paper is the next to go.*
I find it a little annoying as well, but that’s because I’m an old white guy who still likes to read physical newspapers. But it’s a dying medium( like message boards! )and most people DON’T read them these days. They certainly don’t buy them. I can’t really blame Starbucks about this, as inconvenient as it very occasionally is to me.
It’s just the inevitable march of progress. Time to accept that we’re obsolescent and increasingly irrelevant from a marketing pov ;).
ETA: I CAN blame Starbucks for jumping on the Christmas before Thanksgiving bandwagon, which is a sign of the decline of American civilization generally.
Why don’t they provide a few newspapers and books for customers to read while they are sitting there drinking their coffee, instead of stocking up on copies that won’t sell or not subscribing at all?
Shame? For not selling something that relatively very few people want and loses them money? lol
Because only a handful of old people( like me )still read newspapers or books while sipping their coffee. Most people, including some old people( sometimes including me )read their phones, fiddle with a pad or tap away on a laptop. Paper media aren’t quite dead, but they’re dying and it has almost certainly passed the point of no return. Why spend money on a few newspapers that only a couple of people will even glance at?
Granted that might vary from place to place. On an individual store basis your idea might have some real merit. But as corporate policy goes, this one is relatively sane.
Do hotels still provide complementary copies of newspapers to rooms and/or guests? I haven’t been in any hotel for about a year, but for as long as I can remember, there was a current USAToday available, free, for each room.
I have tried the e-version of newspapers and magazines. They suck.
Big time!
Gimme the “old fashioned” stuff, PLEASE!
God help us when Starbucks sells the e-version of coffee!
~VOW
that’s the nice thing about going to a Starbucks inside a store especially Barnes and noble … of course thanks to me and my friends now they wrap all the ad&d gamebooks but wed nab a table then raid the RPG section and play the afternoon away eating day-old pastry they couldn’t sell although we did buy drinks and tip for them putting up with our nonsense
I think they’re making free online newspapers available, if you connect to their wifi, including the L.A. Times and the N.Y. Times, and many others. So at least there’s more variety, and they’re not completely getting rid of the news.
Thread title reads like what I yell at the new puppy. But her name ain’t Starbucks. It’s Hickory.
So I won’t have some Middle-of-the-Road Pop Diva’s saccharine album of Christmas ballads staring at me while I wait in line? I guess I’ll survive…
IME, some years ago, nicer hotels went from placing a USA Today (or another paper) in front of each room door every morning, to having a stack of papers available at the front desk.
But, now that you ask about it, I don’t remember even seeing a stack of newspapers at a hotel in at least the past year (and I’ve stayed at three different hotels, in three different cities, in the past month). Some might still do it, but I suspect it’s dying off.
The local Denny’s has newspapers available. But I think that’s going to end soon, given as how few people read them, preferring news on their phones.
Why read yesterday’s news when you can read today’s?
Just stayed at a hotel in D.C., you could scan a code for that day’s copy of USA today. I’ve stayed there in the past and they used to have a stack at the front desk.
At Starbucks, you can get free access to a bunch of papers though their WiFi. I read the Des Moines Register at a Starbucks in D.C. the morning they released their latest poll.
And why deal with newsprint on your hands? (Is that something that still happens?)
Nonsense! You should offer to sit behind a glass display case so millennials can see how old people used to read the news.
Bonus points if you occasionally look above your newspaper to scowl at the young’uns. 
The CDs were never intended to be a profitable part of the business. They were intended to avoid paying license fees for the music played in the stores. “Record stores” are exempt from such fees.
You mean like at the room in the morning? I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen that, and I’m at a hotel at least several times a year. But I almost always go to Hampton Inns/Residence Inns and those sort of mid level hotels, nothing fancy. We did stay at a fancier resort hotel this year, though, and no newspapers to the door there, either. No idea if there were any at the desk, though, as I’ve never asked.
Heck, I’m having a hard time remembering last time I was offered a newspaper on a flight. That used to be a thing, too. I swear for both it feels like it’s been this way for a decade or two.
We vacation in St Martin every year. A newspaper (Florida International Edition?) is on our door every morning at sunrise. We read the news on our phones. The paper goes straight into the garbage can. Every year I hope they’ve discontinued the practice.