One Way To Boost Newspaper Sales? Write A Story That Someone Will Try To Hide By Buying Up All The Copies

from the there's-an-idea dept

A few folks sent over this bizarre story of two small, local Long Island newspapers seeing a massive, unexpected sales hike. Apparently, two customers went around to every store they could find that stocked the papers and bought them all up -- spending somewhere in the neighborhood of $6,000. The publisher at least seems to have a sense of humor about it (and why not, he's making money):

I’ve been in this business for 50 years and never have I experienced what we experienced this past week: a run on the newsstands by someone involved in a truly monumental school project; someone really proud of their grandchild on the honor roll; someone with a great deal of precious glassware to pack; or, as I suspect, someone intent on suppressing the dissemination of a particular news story.

As for which story someone might have wanted to suppress, well, that's where it's helpful that the buyers bought out two separate local newspapers. While the papers do sometimes publish the same story, this edition only had three such stories. One is about spotting former basketball player Charles Barkley -- which seems unlikely. Then there's one about county money being diverted out of a preservation fund -- which might be embarrassing, but not necessarily buy-up-the-full-run-of-papers bad. But the third story is where the publisher suspects he may have an answer: a story that was in both papers about a local doctor arrested and accused of Medicare fraud.

Of course, who still reads a newspaper on newsprint any more? Yes, that's right, the story in question is available online too. So if it really was about trying to suppress that story, it's time to get some digital "buyers" out there to buy up all these online stories...

Filed Under: journalism, small papers