One of my little pleasures is reading the Sunday NY Times. I just went out to pick up my copy, and as I flipped through it in the store, I noticed that there was no copy of the magazine. This is the third time in three weeks, at three different stores, that I have had an issue like this with the NY Times.
When this happened three weeks ago, several sections were missing. When I went back to the store, the guy behind the counter informed me that they didn’t receive all the sections on that day. I suppose he didn’t feel the need to inform me of this when I bought the paper.
As newspapers and magazines struggle to keep their print revenue on par, something as simple as this is a huge factor. The Web version has been up for hours, and is free. But I decided to spend $3.50 to read it on paper instead, and had to leave my house to do so. However, if I need to check every section in the store in a paranoid fashion, or have to question a store employee about a missing section, then this turns a pleasant Sunday ritual into problem. And in the end, the problem will most likely be loss of revenue to publishers.