Think of the complaints if this corporation were the government

On Thanksgiving morning, I went to the corner to get the Duluth News Tribune and the Star Tribune. Instead of copies of the DNT, there was a sign that the DNT was available only at convenience stores. Well, this is not convenient to me because the nearest convenience stores are about a mile away.

So, we reversed our normal order of newspaper reading and read a large part of the Star Tribune first.

We were going to our cabin and planned to buy a few things at the supermarket, and so we would get the DNT there. Surprise, they had none. I asked the head cashier about this, and she said they had a call in but it hadn't been returned.

I needed gas anyway and stopped at a gas station/convenience store. I put fifty bucks of gas in the tank and pulled out $51 to pay for the gas and the newspaper. Inside I picked up a DNT thicker than the normal Sunday paper. The clerk warned me that was only the ads and the real newspaper was in a different stack. I picked up a normal size paper and left the want ads behind; we would only put them directly in the recycle stack at home. I went to the register to pay for the gas and the paper, and the clerk told me I needed to pay another dollar. The Thanksgiving Day paper was two dollars!!!

Can't Forum Communications, the publisher of the DNT, live within its means? Shouldn't the advertisers be paying for all the extra paper and printing? Is Forum Communications being efficient by having all the ads left behind for the clerks to clean up?

How loud would the complaints be if any government agency suddenly doubled a fee or a tax? How loud would the cries of government waste be if an office threw out such a huge percentage of paper?

I bet we won't see any letters to the editor about this Thanksgiving waste, but we will continue to see letters about government living within its means. A while ago I asked Chuck Frederick, the opinion page editor, if he had gotten any letters about the 33-1/3% increase of the DNT (75 cents to one dollar). He replied, "Haven't gotten any letters about our price increase. Shh!" I read his reply with a smile. What else can he say? He probably has very little input into pricing decisions.

It is amazing what companies can get by with in price increases but governments are heavily criticized for the same or even smaller increases. People are complaining vociferously about property taxes going up about $100/year, but there are no published complaints about the cost of a newspaper going up $104/year.

Another wasteful practice of Forum Communications, that may or may not continue, is providing two copies of the weekly Budgeteer News to some of its customers. For as long as we've lived in Duluth, a free copy of the Budgeteer News has been thrown on our porch on every Saturday. A few weeks ago Forum Communications started putting it in the DNT delivered to the boxes. What need do I have for two copies of the same paper, of which I throw out two-thirds without even looking at?

I don't know if the doubling up will continue or not. There was no Budgeteer on our porch Saturday, and the Saturday DNT didn't contain it. However, there were some stories posted on the Budgeteer web site on Friday. Were there not enough articles to publish this week? We'll probably never know; corporations don't have to have the transparency that we demand from government (and often don't get).

Update: 2011-11-27 16:00 - Sometime after eight o'clock this morning, the Duluth Budgeteer was thrown on our porch. I just noticed a few minutes ago. I'll see next Saturday if the DNT resumes the double publication of the Budgeteer.

Update: 2011-11-27 18:03 - Paragraph about $100/year for tax/price increase added.

Efficient corporations living within their means?

Every so often we receive mail for students who lived in our current house twelve or more years ago. Today we had an offer from AT&T for one of them. AT&T has it right that he is a physician, but I doubt that he was a physician when he lived here. I wonder how much money companies waste with outdated mailing lists.

Many are complaining about the Duluth School system wanting to raise taxes about $100 per year, and they often complain by sending letters to the Duluth News Tribune. I wonder if any stopped to think that the Duluth News Tribune has raised its newsstand price by over $100 per year or 33-1/3 percent (25 cents daily and 50 cents on Sunday).

Speaking of the Duluth News Tribune, if it has to cut costs, why is it inserting in the Sunday edition the same weekly newspaper that is delivered for free on Saturday. Every Saturday a carrier throws a copy of the Budgeteer on almost every doorstep in Duluth. Every Sunday I pick up the Duluth News Tribune at the corner and it includes a copy of the Budgeteer.

Compromise as a distraction from the truth

Again speaking of the Duluth News Tribune, I attended an editorial board meeting several weeks ago. The publisher repeated over and over again about "both sides" of issues and the need to come together.

Well, I have a compromise for him. He wants to charge $1.00 for the daily paper. I and many others want it for free. So, let's compromise and he'll charge and we'll pay 50 cents for the daily paper.

Lies, damn lies, and headlines

Jana Peterson, editor of the Duluth Budgeteer, wrote a refreshing editorial in this week's issue, "No tolerance for lying". Her editorial addresses the people who expect her to publish their letters even when they make statements that are not true. The best part of it was quoting a note she has hanging over her desk:

"Giving lies equal access to truth is not balanced journalism."

I sent her the following email. Since I haven't posted anything for a few days and it took me some time to write, I decided I may as well make it a blog entry. Drat, there goes having hundreds of readers over having a dozen or so readers. Ah, but my blog entry will be available to all for years; my published letter will only be freely available to all for a week.

Good morning,

Thank you for your editorial “No tolerance for lying”.

I am really disheartened by the number of people who get coverage for their distortions of facts or even creation of falsehoods. I’m even more disheartened that a once honorable party has been all but taken over by such people.

Unfortunately, “lying”, or more appropriately distortion, is practiced by many who have more honorable motives. You yourself did it with “Working to ensure our children are insured”. Yes, too many vulnerable people do not have sufficient resources to pay for health care. But, how many of them currently need health care? By stressing the former, we make the problem more acute than it actually is. Of course, the cases of immense health care expenses are relatively few, but who’s counting when one of them is you (thanks to Bob Gibson’s “Ski Songs”). Kidding aside, shouldn’t we spend more resources addressing the problems of the few rather than a more expensive “one size fits all” approach?

“Lying” also takes the form of the “narrative fallacy”, the connection of facts when no meaningful connection may exist. For example, “Investors drove down stocks today on the latest oil prices”. One, did all investors drive down prices. Two, aren’t those who react daily to “market conditions” traders rather than investors. Three, weren’t there many, many more factors involved in stock price fluctuations than oil prices. Four, did all stock prices drop or only slightly more than fifty percent. Or maybe a majority of stock prices rose, but those that dropped were greater in sum than those that gained. In other words, a simple headline hides important information, which is another form of lying.

An even worse “narrative fallacy” is ascribing the votes of some to all voters. For example, “Massachusetts voters reject Obama health plan”. For more on this, see “The Party of One has capitulated?”,

http://magree.blogspot.com/2010/02/party-of-one-has-capitulated.html

I got the term “narrative fallacy” from “The Black Swan” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I think it is a must read for all those who wish to think more deeply about the whole process of thinking. It is available at the Duluth Public Library. I bought my copy at Northern Lights Books, and I hope to read it more times than I read “Lord of the Rings” (3).

If you think this rant is suitable for publication, I plan to tie your hands. After I click on send, I will post this to my blog, see below. I think the title will be “Lies, damn lies, and headlines”.

Keep writing. You have some of the attitudes that will make you a “skeptical empiricist”, another term used heavily by Taleb.