Littering

This morning, the Colorado Daily left another "free paper" in my driveway.

They'd agreed, twice now, not to do this anymore. Today, I'll make another call. Last time, despite a phone message promising to return my phone call within 24 hours, it took three days of calling to get a response.

I think what's driving it is this, which I've written about before. Newspapers are desperate, and don't know what niche to go for.

(Note, also, this interesting chart on the cost-effectiveness of newspaper advertising.)

The Daily Camera was littering my yard for a while.

A series of polite phonecalls got apologies, but no improvement.

What worked was pointing out to Tim Siebert, at the Camera, that littering breaks both local and state laws. There are fines and jail time attached to repeated littering. It breaks local and state laws.

While it's glamorous to defend freedom of the press, it's tougher to admit to your journalistic colleagues that you've just gotten out of jail for littering.

I went on to explain that throwing someone in jail for repeatedly ignoring my requests not to drop junk in my yard seemed like overkill -- still does -- but I wanted to agree on some kind of consequence. His just promising not to do it again wasn't working.

Tim agreed to give me a subscription to a paper of my choice if it happened again within a year.

That stopped it. It's April, and the year will be up in September.

Will I need the same conversation with Zoanne Kabriel, at the Colorado Daily? Stay tuned.