Subscription Friction

Every day, I get the New York Times delivered to my home. For the last few weeks, the New York Sun has also been tucked inside my delivery copy. The first few days, I was jazzed: I used to subscribe to the Sun and enjoyed flipping through it.

But now I'm annoyed. I've passed the point of deciding whether to subscribe to the paper; I'm not going to. I'm also past the point of reading it every day in addition to the four other dailies I receive. So I recycle the Sun largely unread every single day, and I'm increasingly irritated at the Times for foisting it upon me.

Why promote another newspaper that's an erstwhile competitor to your newspaper in the first place? Why do so for so long that your reputation and brand start to take a hit? If this Sun promotion continues much longer, I'll think less of the Times, and that seems counter to whatever it is they're trying to achieve.