Out & About Nashville, a formerly free LGBT newspaper changed its policy to the first copy being free with additional ones being 50 cents (on the honor system) when a university employee was found to be routinely throwing away all issues. A few years later they had a similar series of thefts.
And as any of us who’ve watched Better Call Saul know taking a person’s newspaper can have nasty consequences even if you leave money in its place.
Then there’s the Berkeley newspaper theft victim.
You checked on the roof, in the bushes and over in the neighbor’s yard for it?
Thanks for the links to the other story about that thief. The LGBT paper decided not to prosecute.
The circumstances of the perpetrator influenced O&AN’s decision not to prosecute him. It seems he is the main support relative for a patient at the hospital and it was on his own, during downtime away from his relative, that he approached the O&AN boxes and stole the newspaper copies. Had O&AN gone forward with a prosecution, according to Grady, “the man would have been barred from campus, and this would have disadvantaged his sick relative. This was not a consequence we were willing to impose.”
That O&AN took the high road, found some sympathy for the particulars and specific individuals in the situation in spite of the unjust action toward the newspaper, is not lost on Grady. “I hope the irony is clear,” he said, “that, despite the fact that many anti-LGBT advocates press for just the kind of laws that would keep LGBT people out of their partners’ hospital rooms, we could not do the same in return in good conscience.”
“In the end, it is our community who so often are the truly gracious and forgiving party, virtues which the social reactionaries supposedly value so highly but so rarely demonstrate.”
“… nigardly…”
What
A word used with its original meaning of “Stingy, or miserly”, instead of its more modern meaning of “Everybody lose their heads and freak out because of what this word sounds like”
That happened to me at least once a week. They had a number to call about misdeliveries; one morning I called to say that my paper hadn’t arrived. I got in the car to go to work, and when I started driving, I saw it had been in the driveway all along – but underneath the car.
At the end of the year I got a newspaper with an envelope in it, that said something along the lines of “a token of your appreciation is welcome this holiday season.” I thought it would be a neat trick to put a tip in the envelope, drive over to the address, and throw the envelope up on their roof.
We used to get the Savannah Morning News delivered every day despite the fact that we’d never ordered it, never paid for it, and when we called the paper they had no record of our address in their system.
Why didn’t they just install surveillance cameras? The steam-powered ones were kind of bulky, but not all that expensive.
I can’t believe how many people don’t know what this word means. Senators and congressmen included.
Oh yes, the Berkeley Newspaper Thief, a.k.a. Mayor Tom Bates.
When I used to deliver papers as a kid, there’d always be a couple of extras towards the end of the route (you plan to have a couple of extras just in case a throw goes wild etc…), and I always left a paper on the doorstep of the elderly lady that managed the apartments I delivered to. Any other extras would either get handed to whoever wanted them, or tossed on unsuspecting doorsteps on the way home. Better than having those things cluttering up my place.
Maybe you had a local paperboy that had taken a shine to someone in the household?
I had the same thing happen, years ago. My theory is that they gave me a free sub to get me hooked, and then forgot to terminate it. Stranger things have happened.
Cut him some slack, man. It’s gotta be tough avoiding all those tornadoes and breakdancers…
Reps from a local paper here offer free gift cards outside the grocery store for subscribing to the paper. I don’t remember the introductory price, but I know it’s cheap. I didn’t opt for it or even talk to them but I still got the paper delivered regularly. It took numerous phone calls to get them to stop. My guess is they need to show a certain distribution to get the money they want from advertisers.
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