This morning as I took my daughter to school she expressed sadness about litter at the foot of our front yard and she called attention particularly to the "free" Wednesday Tennessean that continues to be delivered to my house in spite of requests that I made last spring that they stop. As of this morning the Gannett Corporation continues to litter my street with free copies that no one I know has subscribed to receive. There are still week-old mildewing copies from last Wednesday on sidewalks, too.
So, this morning, my kindergartener's sadness motivated me to scoop up both copies of the Tennessean thrown on the ground at my house and return them to the newspaper's Broadway offices. I arrived at the Tennessean's front desk and told the unamused receptionists that I was returning the corporation's litter and that if their circulation department continued to throw its trash at my yard I would be filing a report with the police next time, since littering is a violation of Metro ordinances.
To her credit one of the receptionists took my complaint and recorded it for circulation. However, the foundering print media is not garnering any empathy or support in these quarters by continuing to trash my neighborhood and eventually cram landfills with uninvited newspapers so that it can pay its staff salaries. If others are tired of the Tennessean's unwelcome intrusions in our community, perhaps we can work together to leverage changes to the newspaper's wasteful circulation practices.
Hear hear! I cannot figure out how to get them to stop throwing that free Davidson AM either. If you get together a posse, put the word out. You'll find plenty of support.
ReplyDeleteAmen! I've tried to get them to stop littering in my yard as well.
ReplyDeleteMike, you should file a report with the Better Business Bureau like I did.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.flickr.com/photos/cgrantham/2628917225/
Having a collective record of this business practice will be necessary for STEP TWO.
I have a feeling this is a widespread practice by Gannett, and if Gannett is deceiving advertisers into believing we're all "qualified subscribers," as the Tennessean's Circulation told me I and my neighbors were, then that's got to be fraudulent.
It's a matter of time before a competitor picks up on that and cleans up the entire country with some much deserved attention and maybe even massive class action remedy for defrauded advertisers.
You are not alone.
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