What's a newspaper worth?
So, I’m walking to Warren Street tube at around ten pm, and when I get there, a fella’s handing out the Evening Standard for free… I take a copy, not to read of course, just to witter about on here… 😉
Anyway, it’s vaguely interesting I’m thinking, the cost of the news disappears the older it gets, of course…
But then I get to Victoria, and suddenly the news is expensive again… A copy of the Evening Standard costs ten pence here…
Which in one sense is really incongruous, and on the other makes sense…
The business reckons they can make money by selling it at ten pence at Victoria, so they do. But they just need to get rid of it at Warren Street, which they do by giving it away so that the disposal of the leftover copies is what Douglas Adams would have called an SEP (somebody else’s problem)…
But as a person on the street, what is it telling me about the value of the paper? It’s worth nothing, depending on the time of day…
That much has always been true; nobody would pay you for yesterday’s paper. But now the value of the paper changes depending on where I am? I’m not sure why, exactly, but it just feels a little wrong.
Like I’m being ripped off by circumstance, like buying the paper abroad or wanting a coffee at a service station.
If I’d wanted to read it, that is.
I have better things to do. Like annoying you with blog posts about the Evening Standard… 🙂
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