Paper boys

[muckefuck]

I saw a newspaper in the staff lounge today and didn't recognise it the Trib at first due to another desperate redesign. Later I passed a stand at the entrance to campus and had the same thought I've had there many times before: Why are all their salesmen dowdy old men? I mean, think about it: If they're using middle-aged guys that even I don't find attractive, what are the chances that the average eighteen year-old is going to give them so much as a second glance? For a while, they showed enough marketing nous to hire pert young women to distribute Red Eye, but that lasted only a couple weeks before they shifted the work to middle-aged bums. I guess kudos to them for not getting all lookist and ageist and/or showing some loyalty to their employees, but I'm not sure how many of them will still appreciate that after they're on the dole because the corporation has gone bust.

Comments

[gopower.livejournal.com]

I doubt that you could find many young people, let alone attractive ones, who will work for the pittance the Trib probably pays. (Unless you dip into the immigrant labor pool, which works for the Trib editorially, but they may feel that's unwise from a public-relations perspective).

Besides, they have to save up to pay the eye-candy who bounce up and down on the Redeye pride float (I sincerely doubt that any of those people have day jobs at the Tribune Company)

BTW, Crain's reported a while back that the original redesign plan for the Trib called for actually changing the paper's name to "The Trib" on the masthead. I doubt the ghost of Colonel McCormick would have taken too kindly to that.

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

Down here we had middle-aged and old men in suits distributing copies of the New Testament.

They might have been more attractive than the Tribune people. Too bad I didn't take pictures for you. :-)

[bwillsouth.livejournal.com]

Even though Austin is all librull and sticky with resin, it's still in Texas. This means that Bible thumpers come onto campus and try to distribute literature. Invariably they're middle aged, old, or lame-ass frumpy young people, and they're being all hellfire-and-brimstone. They would probably hand out more flyers, though likely not get many souls, if they had bouncy, hip-looking young ladies handing them out. Given an adequate level of barely-concealed misogyny, you can sell almost anything.

desperate redesign

[niemandsrose.livejournal.com]

I know! Have you *seen* how many fonts they mix on a single page? How many different sizes and fonts they mix *in a single page's headlines alone*? It's HIDEOUS.

(Used to be you could tell an advertorial from a real article by the font shift if nothing else, but no longer. Perhaps that's their ultimate goal, grr.)

Around here...

[ursine1.livejournal.com]

Young adults hand out the free newspapers like Metro, ADN, 20 minutos and Qué. I have thought they did this to score a few €s before they headed off for their day jobs or college.

Chuck