(Or, more specifically, toss out a proposal that I think would be awesome—though I suspect that catering to people like me probably isn’t a good business model.)
Anderew Sullivan wants us to subscribe to the Atlantic. I don’t plan to. It’s not that The Atlantic isn’t an excellent publication. And it’s not that $14.95 is an unreasonable amount to pay to support an excellent publication. I just don’t want The Atlantic to show up in my mail box ten times a year, a day or so after I have read the articles I plan to read and ignored the others. I don’t want the Atlantic to sit unread on a table for a month or two until I finally decide to recycle it.
The newspapers are even worse. I would love to support my local newspaper—particularly if it helped me actually pay attention to local news. But I can’t justify wasting a mound of paper when I’m only likely to read a few articles a month. Getting my news from the Internet is more convenient, more expedient, and less wasteful. With the an online edition readily available, the print edition actually has negative utility.
Don’t get me wrong—I like print. A lot. I have roughly a thousand books and am acquiring more all the time. Their presence makes me happy—even if I’m only likely to read or reread a fraction of them. They’re collected there in case I want to read them, loan them, or simply show them off.
A Proposal:
The Atlantic and other general interest publications, should offer an alternative to the standard subscription. About once a year, it should take some of the stories that are likely to remain historically relevant, collect them and bind them in a single, attractive volume. Send that to the people who would love to support the publication, but don’t want a lot of disposable paper arriving in the mail.
