The Globe itself reported that the trouble started on Monday when the company switched to “a new delivery company.”
In a story on Thursday, the Globe said “missing papers” across the local area “prompted an outcry from readers, who vented on social media and overwhelmed the Globe’s phone system with complaints.”
According to Bray, the phone system “crashed” and reporters “found it difficult to call outside the building.”
“Many readers got busy signals,” he added. “One regular reader of my column managed to get through to me and begged me to do something. I and a bunch of my colleagues contacted our CEO and said that reporters were so concerned about the problem that we’d be willing to help deliver the paper.”
A Globe spokesperson, contacted by CNNMoney on Saturday night, said the company would comment on the delivery situation sometime later.
Does it matter what’s in the paper these days? Does it even matter? If nobody can GET the fucking thing, it doesn’t matter what amazing longform hyperlocal listicle YOU’LL NEVER BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED NEXT WILL ASTOUND YOU WARM YOUR HEART MAKE YOU HATE HUMANITY RESTORE YOUR FAITH IN THE WORLD is actually in the paper.
So keep rearranging the newsroom. Keep dry-humping the latest trend you heard about at conferences. Keep paying consultants and doing customer focus groups. Keep pouring money down a hole. Maybe nobody will notice that a basic human task, delivering a product for which a customer has exchanged legal tender, seems to be beyond you, and you can get away with blaming the Internet some more.
The reason this shit makes me so insane is I’ve been watching it happen for YEARS while we whined about Craigslist and Face-Space takin’ all our jobs away. There are two basic reasons newspapers are in the shitter right now and they’re marketing and distribution. People need to know about your thing, and they need to get your thing without it being a giant pain the balls to do so.
If it is harder for me to get a paper at a non-assfucked price than it is to deal with my insurance company, I am not going to get your paper, and if you are not advertising your paper in places and situations where I am, I am not going to get your paper either. This is pretty basic business stuff here. Google algorithms don’t enter into it yet. You barely have to do math.
And the thing is that everyone working at the paper knows this, except the hairdos in management. It’s why reporters at the Globe are like, look, if we are the only ones showing up for work ANYWAY, we might as well get this handled:
Dozens of reporters and editors at the Globe are planning to pitch in with Sunday’s deliveries due to widespread delivery problems for the past week.
“I’m a Globe employee. I’m also a reader angry with 0 papers at home this week,” NHL beat reporter Fluto Shinzawa tweeted. “I’ll be out helping to get you Sunday’s Globe. Stay with us.”
The reporters know, because they are not idiots, mostly. I will LOVE hearing the excuses from the top execs. Maybe they can donate their bonuses to HIRE SOME FUCKING PAPERBOYS. You know, we used to be able to just do this.
You can’t do this, you don’t get to bitch about the Internet and people reading their “news” online and not paying for content and blah blah fucking chickenfried blah it’s so stupid. You can’t do this, you don’t get to say anything about anything anybody else is doing. Get the goddamn paper out. Get it on the porch. What is WRONG with you?
A.
I didn’t get my Sunday paper yesterday so I called the “circulation desk”. The machine I gave my account number to promised me I’d be credited for the paper.
No person there. No “we’ll get one right to you”. Just oh well, you don’t have to pay for that one. Yeah, and if I don’t even bother subscribing, I won’t have to pay for any of them.