An open letter to the Wall Street Journal.
Dear Editors,We read so much about why newspapers are dying out. I never understood this. I used to have your marvelous paper delivered to my doorstep every day. "This," I thought, holding your paper in my hands, "is the reason the newspaper exists! This great reporting, clear writing, keen insight! God I love newsprint."But then about a week ago your newspaper stopped arriving without notice.And now I feel I have real insight into the failure of the newspaper in this day and age.So it is with great regret that I will be canceling my subscription to your brilliant newspaper.I don't want to do so.But there is no longer any delivery in the rural hamlet where I live: it's called "San Francisco." Have you heard of it?I had doorstep delivery a few weeks ago. But I had it rerouted to rural New Hampshire, where I was taking care of my sick mother.Remarkably, in rural New Hampshire, the Wall Street Journal can be delivered by U.S. Mail the same day! Whereas in tiny, forlorn San Francisco, it cannot be delivered at all--not by mail, not to my doorstep.My mother is much better now (thanks), but when I moved back to remote, quaint old San Francisco, the Wall Street Journal was no longer be delivered to my doorstep.It's five days now, Monday through Friday, that it hasn't arrived. I've reported to the inappropriately named "services" web site every single day. ("Services"! What a hoot!)They tell me things like "it's coming in the mail." It's not. It never has.Or they tell me: there is no curbside delivery in your area.Which is odd, because when I jog down Valencia Avenue at 5:30 a.m., there are several Wall Street Journals sitting on the doorstep of a building near 17th and Valencia--less than two miles from where I live.I assume those newspapers appear due to some miraculous process, because there is no delivery in my neighborhood, I am assured.I walk with envy past my neighbors who have The New York Times and The San Francisco Chronicle delivered.I could try subscribing to the Times, but I find their navel-gazing New-York-centric approach and self-consciously literary style, frankly, disgusting. (Robert Benchley complained about reporters mimicking a literary style a long, long time ago: apparently the 'paper of record' didn't get the memo.)But I can read the New York Times on my iPhone--there's a special app for it. I know you would not consider doing that with your paper. And that is noble of you.I could try to read your paper on the web using my phone. But your interface is terribly slow to load and awkward to use on a mobile device. Did you know that Amazon and other web sites have special mobile versions of their site? But I know you would not consider that.Forlornly I jog past other people's newspapers in the pre-dawn hours. A freshly-opened and -spilled can of Bud Light is still emptying itself onto the sidewalk. "Who drinks Bud Light at 6:00 a.m.?," I think to myself. (Too literary.)Good luck with your charming enterprise: writing, editing and publishing a world-class newspaper, which is not delivered to homes, has no iPhone app, and has no web version tailored to the mobile phone platform.Stand by your principles! Writing, editing and publishing, but NO DELIVERY!If everyone follows your approach, we can assure that newspapers will be stamped out, once and for all.Very sincerely,Edward R. O'Neill, Ph.D.San Francisco, CA
