I also haven’t seen a room-delivered paper in years, and good thing too because it was invariably USA Today which was never a great source of news even before the days of Web news, and it was simply something I had to step over in the morning while also seeming particularly wasteful of paper.
A couple years ago I did see a rack of papers in the lobby, once, which is the only time I’ve noticed it, but maybe they are a lot more common and I don’t notice them because I’m not looking.
I’ve seen newspapers on international flights recently. I assume that’s because of all the rules of when you’re supposed to not be using electronic devices.
Paper at the door used to be standard at the nicer Marriott brands, courtyard and up. But, haven’t seen it in years. Think it may have been discontinued at the same time they stopped sliding the final bill under your door.
The last time I stayed at a Marriott, they still were giving us USA Today at the door. But that was a couple years ago.
I’ve noticed some hotels that do the free breakfast buffet thing putting a few copies of various papers on a counter or table in the breakfast room for people to read while they’re having breakfast. I think this makes the most sense - they are there for people who want them and don’t go to waste on the people who don’t. You just put it back when you’re done for someone else to read. I especially like having a copy of the local paper, particularly if I am in town for an event that might have coverage in it.
I’ve been staying at quite a few mid-range motels recently. About half still offer a stack of USA Today in the lobby.
Some people would rather deal with that than spilling coffee or food on their laptop or getting grease all over the keyboard.
I’ll continue to read newspapers at home and at some meals out until they’re pried from my ink-stained hands or everything goes online.
I always tried to get to the Starbucks early before they sold out, so I don’t think piles of unsold papers were their problem. I still have not figured out how to read a newspaper online. And as a subscriber I get unlimited online access to the Times.
USA Today’s parent company Gannett is being bought out.
There have been some prominent reports that after the dust settles it will be bye-bye time for the USA Today print edition. (A presentation to Gannett employees on the future of the company never once mentioned USA Today.)
The ubiquitous distribution of the crappily colored paper may soon end.
That’s really not new, actually. Most mornings I read newspapers from 100 years ago today on the Library of Congress Chronicling America website. In 1919, the papers (in New York, at least) were already starting to run Christmas ads since early November. I’m actually kind of disappointed that I missed Macy’s Santa village - it had a 3-story tall Jack and the Beanstalk display that sounded impressive.
There’s a famous Peanuts comic from the 1950s where Linus goes to buy a Halloween costume in the last week of October and he can’t because they are putting up xmas decorations.
Although one of my favorite CDs ever was bought at a Starbucks- Carol King’s Living Room Tour. I won’t miss the CDs, but glad I got that one!
Do you have an iPad? If so, you can download the NYT app and login with your subscriber ID. Otherwise, just go to the website and login. I’m a former newspaper junkie. At one time, I had the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and the NY Times delivered. Add in the occasional National Post or Toronto Sun that I never paid for but just appeared, my recycling was VERY heavy.
I now subscribe to the Toronto Star replica edition and NYT digital edition that I read on my iPad. I’m also a freeloader of The Guardian.
It’s not just Starbucks. There are no more papers anywhere. I’m in SoCal. The internet was out for a few days and I went out looking for a Sunday LA Times. No can do. The liquor store didn’t have them inside and the distributors had removed the outside racks. Supermarket also had no racks and no papers inside. Drugstore? No. 7-Eleven? Nada. Didn’t feel like driving all the way to Barnes & Noble, but I also didn’t see the point. They’re gone folks. Kinda like my career. Motion picture newspaper advertising. Gone.
While I remember the (in)famous jokes about USA Today having the ‘best investigative paragraphs in the nation!’ I have a weird soft spot about them.
Years ago I worked for a Catholic girls’ academy. Their basketball coach (who was also a teacher and the athletic director) won some landmark number of games - I can’t remember the number now - and as their PR person, I put out a press release about it to the local press outlets. Somehow it ended up on the wire, and USA Today picked it up as their paragraph of the day from our state. Considering all the other things they could have printed about what was happening in our corner of the world that day, they picked our little thing.
I wouldn’t have known about it, of course, except one of nuns at the school had a subscription, and she saw it and brought it to me. It was unchanged from what I wrote in the release, so I knew it came from that. It was my first lesson in never knowing where your words will end up.
Maybe as a retirement gig ;).
Fair. But I’m not letting them off the hook - everybody does it is no excuse.
Interesting. My local 7-Eleven still seem to be carrying them( as of a couple of months ago, anyway ). But I guess they might disappear any day now. I know the gas stations I used to be able to get them when my delivery failed have been dropping off one by one over the last two years or so. The apocalypse is nigh.
It does look like newspapers are starting to figure out how to do online content. I subscribe to the Washington Post and the app is easy to use and read. It’s much better than the scanned edition of a paper that is impossible to read.
Now, if magazines could just figure this out.
wasn’t USA today originally supposed to be a happy feelgood paper to supplement all the local crime and such that people read every day?
I appreciate the print version of news as much as anyone, in that it’s the quickest way to scan the whole thing and get a good sense of what the paper is putting out. But I don’t miss dealing with the paper material itself once read, which immediately becomes a nuisance. I subscribe to the L.A. Times online, which includes an electronic simulation of the print version, (as well as all the news in an easy-to-navigate electronic form, with additional items, and video). So I don’t have to worry about whether Starbucks has it or not–I can go to the donut shop instead, or read it on the Metro, or just stay home, and still have it. And when I do go to Starbucks, now I can read the NY Times or the Chicago Tribune as well, for free. (But that will apparently not be free forever.)
So I’m not too upset by this change, but I do understand that if I were someone who can’t afford a phone with data, and to pay for news, who goes to Starbucks just for the print version of the paper, it’s a loss. I don’t think there are too many in that category. Most people I see go into Starbucks without purchasing anything are not there to read the paper but rather to charge their phone.
But without all the used paper, what will you use to wrap fish and other packages? Or for an emergency hat/ashtray/toilet paper/…
Hmmm, e-version of coffee?
I think this is what is meant by covfefe.
Sort of.
It was also a long running experiment like those books that don’t use the letter “e” to see if they could write news stories using “USA” instead of America. (Avoiding “American” was always good for laughs.)
And here I thought that the paper’s continual reference to “USA” instead of “United States” or “America” was merely an attempt to call attention to the paper’s name. 
USA Today has long had two things going for it in terms of content: a good sports section and the occasional solid investigative report. The state-by-state capsules used to be decent but in recent times have been abbreviated and less entertaining.